The Gold Blog

In a post 9/11 world, “due diligence” is constantly on the forefront—or at least we are expected to believe that. Although banks these days are preaching “due diligence,” it appears that at least one bank does not practice what it preaches. Monterey County Bank, based in Monterey California, http://www.montereycountybank.com that supports several card platforms for businesses providing prepaid debit card products for use on the internet and at atms, has missed the boat on “due diligence,” at the expense of those who entrusted it.

One of those businesses that it sponsors, Digital World Global Card, Inc., http://www.digitalworldcard.com , based out of New York, New York, is owned in full by sole shareholder Joseph Simon LaCroix, aka Joseph Simon, a convicted felon in the province of Ontario, Canada, according to Rowena McDougall, Senior Manager, Public Affairs, for the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) .

On October 3, 2005 Joseph LaCroix, the sole officer and director of Digital World Financial, pleaded guilty to the charge of conducting the business of a loan and trust corporation without being registered in the province of Ontario. LaCroix was fined $50,000 and placed on probation for two years. As a condition of the probation LaCroix must pay approximately $2.2 million in restitution to depositors. Good luck on collecting that!

LaCroix also pleaded guilty to carrying on the business of insurance in Ontario without a licence and was fined $5,000. Seems Canada garners favor with criminals, as its criminal penalties certainly don’t seem to discourage crime.

For more on LaCroix’s convictions, see the following:

http://www.claimsurvey.com/english/pubs/news/2005/20051007-digitalworld.asp

http://www.fsco.gov.on.ca/english/pubs/news/2005/20051007-digitalworld.asp

http://www.ontarioinsurance.com/english/licensing/ceasedesistorders/cdo-digitalworld.asp

http://www.ontarioinsurance.com/english/pubs/bulletins/mebulletins/2006/g-03_06.asp

http://www.sfsc.gov.sk.ca/ssc/files/enforcementorders/2002_enf/temporary/digitalworldfinancialinc(temp)feb27-02.pdf

http://www.sfsc.gov.sk.ca/ssc/files/enforcementorders/2002_enf/extending/digitalworldfinancialinc(ext)mar13-02.pdf

http://www.fsco.gov.on.ca/English/licensing/ceasedesistorders/cdo-digitalworld.asp

Now, less than three years later, LaCroix’s Digital World Global Card, Inc. was shut down on April 1, 2008, by Monterey County Bank after LaCroix has allegedly misappropriated the funds of its many cardholders. Those cardholders had put their trust in Digital World Card, Inc. as well as Monterey County Bank—after all, if you can’t trust a bank, who can you trust? To add insult to injury, LaCroix had his staff to tell cardholders that their accounts were being audited by the bank, implying that they had somehow done something wrong. His staff has since become non-existant. Calls to the company (866) 878-8020 go directly to voice mail, and are not returned. Calls to LaCroix’s cell phone (347) 853-4746 went unanswered.

It should be noted that apparently all of LaCroix’s resellers were left out in the cold. It should also be noted that the ONLY cards affected are those that have the name Digital World Global Card at the top of the card – No others. Funds were sent to Digital World Card, Inc. for the benefit of cardholders, and instead, went to the benefit of LaCroix. In reported cases, LaCroix even emptied funds already on cardholders cards!

LaCroix’s site, Digital World Card, Inc., still maintains its website at http://www.digitalworldcard.com . Do Not Order From This Site! Do not become one of his victims! If the bank backing your prepaid debit card is Monterey County Bank, do your OWN due diligence!

Please remember that Monterey County Bank merely shut his program down on April 1, 2008. They offered absolutely NO COMPENSATION for their cardholders whatsoever. Do you think they would feel the same if you owed them money?

Remember, Buyer Beware!

Q1. How long has your company been online?
XtraOrbit has been online since July 2002, so it’s almost our Fifth year online.

Q2. Please tell us more about your online business?
We are an IT solutions provider based in Alexandria, Egypt Providing web hosting, domain registration, and web development services to small and medium businesses. Also I would like to mention, that our hosting infrastructure depends on a State of the art carrier class data center facility located in Houston, Texas, as well as another one located in Cairo, Egypt.

Q3. What digital currency do you accept?
Mainly, e-gold and Moneybookers along with the traditional Visa/Master cards, but soon we’ll start accepting other digital currencies as Liberty Reserve, e-Bullion and 1MDC.

Q4. How long have you accepted e-gold?
We started accepting e-gold since 2003 when we were first introduced to e-gold by a friend and I would like to say that it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

Q5. Why do you accept e-gold?
At first, we were looking for an alternative solution for accepting payments, especially for 3rd world countries where credit card market penetration is very low compared to the United States and other European countries. But now and after several years of accepting e-gold, we’re sure that e-gold has the potential to be a dominant player in the e-market, and we would like to be there when the time comes.

Q6. What hosting customers do you feel you are targeting by accepting e-gold?
There’s a myth out there, that e-gold is only used by certain customers or communities, but from my own experience, this is not true, as we have customers who prefer to pay with e-gold from almost every spot in the world. We’ve even plotted our customers’ locations on a daily updated map, check it yourself at: XtraOrbit.com

Q7. Do you accept casino hosting, investments or adult webs using e-gold?
No, we don’t accept HYIPs, Gambling or Adult (legal/illegal) sites to be hosted or operated on our network. I’m proud to say that we were the first hosting company to enforce such policy, we even went as far as putting signs on every page of our website asking customers not to sign if their websites are related to these sites.

Q8. Who is your mainstream e-gold customer ?
Since our hosting packages suits almost everyone, I believe that anyone paying with e-gold is a potential customer, from the average Joe to Mr. Business Man.

Q9. What benefits do you see that e-gold & digital gold currency bring to your business?
Simply Peace of mind, with their lowest transaction rates in the market, the “no chargeback” guarantee and their top notch security measures. Not to mention that every penny in the e-gold system is backed by real gold, which even adds more protection against fiat inflation.

Q10. Would you recommend e-gold to other hosting and IT solutions companies? Why?
Sure, I highly recommend e-gold to any service provider, not just hosting or IT solution providers, especially those providing real-time services as domain registration or download able software, as I’m sure they’ll be pleased with the “no chargeback guarantee” along with the benefits mentioned before. Also, with a few lines of code they’ll be able to integrate e-gold into any payment system in a matter of minutes, thanks to the e-gold shopping cart interface (SCI).

Q11. What changes have you noticed over the past 3 years in the use of digital gold currency/e-gold?
I believe that e-gold –at some stage- was mainly used to store funds but it’s not the case anymore. Many online shops have started to accept e-gold through the past years, thus encouraging users to spend their ‘stored’ e-gold in exchange for goods and services. While the HYIP/Gambling market still holds the lion share in daily transactions. I hope that soon enough, and with the expanding user base this will be changed.

Q12. Do you see a profit difference between credit card income and digital currency income? (we understand that digital currency may have lower fees)
Of course, e-gold for example offers the lowest rates in the market, also their “no chargeback” guarantee keeps you assured that you’ll never get charged for fraudulent transactions as it’s the case with credit cards.

Q13. Since there are no ‘chargebacks’ with e-gold may I ask if you have experienced any with your credit card income ?
Credit card chargebacks have always been a major threat for our online business, costing us thousands of dollars every year, no matter how hard we tried or how good our fraud screening or due diligence checks were.

Q14. Have your digital currency account ever been hacked, frozen or limited?
Thanks to e-gold Secure Randomized Keyboard ‘SRK’, AccSent and other security measures our account has never been hacked, frozen or limited.

Q15. Have you incorporated or built in e-gold into any of your clients’ shopping carts or webs?
I’m glad to say that we’ve integrated e-gold in many online stores on behalf of our clients.

Q16. Do many of your clients accept digital currency such as e-gold?
Around 40% of our clients accept e-gold as their preferred method of payment.

Q17. Do you recommend e-gold to your clients?
In every possible occasion, and as far as offering special discounts to those paying with e-gold.

Q18. The growth of the Internet has been tremendous in the past several years and your business has thrived, what do you see as the future of e-gold and digital gold currency?
I would say that e-gold -as well as other digital gold currencies- have the chance to become a role player in the near future. But to be honest, they have to put more efforts in advertising and promoting their concept.

Q19. What webs would you recommend to new users where they can learn more about digital gold currency?
The digital gold currency community is a rich one, users from all over \the world contribute on daily basis to share their knowledge.

I highly recommend the following sites to new users :

http://www.gold-pages.net
http://www.goldfaqs.com
http://www.dgcwiki.com
http://www.the-gold-blog.com/

*I would like to thank Mr. Halawany for providing me with the interview.

http://www.digitalmoneyworld.com

e-gold

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Growth of ‘Virtual Game Currency’ such as the Linden dollar from Second Life, is booming on the internet. With such widespread use, new businesses, organizations and concepts are being created to exploit these young financial worlds. One such business is Ginko Financial. Ginko takes advantage of the excess deposits of Linden $’s quietly sitting in players’ accounts.

Ginko offer a savings account with a daily yield and allows players to make money on their spare L$’s. Once deposits have built up, they loan out the Linden $’s to other ’suitable’ users and charge a higher rate.

The operation is similar to a bank, however, these being virtual dollars… no regulation is required. The system is quite successful and currently there are over 100,000,000 (million) Linden $’s on deposit with Ginko Financial. The exchange rate for the Linden $ is actually published by Reuters.

A nice gentleman by the name of ‘Adam Reuters’ is Reuters’ bureau chief in Second Life. Well, his real name is is Adam Pasick, and he is a a veteran tech and media journalist. Adam’s desk is a very informative and up to date section. Take a quick look here…

At today’s exchange rate the 100 million in Linden $’s on deposit at Ginko is worth about $375k in USD. Not bad for a virtual world.

These type of ‘real world’ financial applications being applied to a virtual world should be on the rise in the coming months and years. It seems possible, that today early in this industry’s growth, there may be a lot of big opportunities for knowledgeable entrepreneurs to establish business links between the virtual world and the brick & mortar financial world.

While there is some opposition from the game companies to exchanging virtual currency into fiat money, there does not seem to be any opposition to loaning out the V$.

http://digitalmoneyworld.com/

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Adding to its global mobile strategy, Cyphermint, Inc., a leading provider of secure electronic payment solutions, announced today that mobile banking and bill payment capabilities on a consumer’s mobile phone or other wireless device can be securely linked to a consumer’s credit, debit, stored value card or bank account through its PayCash Mobile platform.

PayCash, with its enhanced patented digital security, authentication and processing features, enables banked and un-banked mobile phone users worldwide to conduct bill payment, mobile banking, person-to-person transfers and retail payments with their cell phones. PayCash Mobile is designed to integrate credit, debit, stored value cards and bank accounts for funding of mobile payments such as mobile banking, bill payment, mCommerce and other payment related services.

PayCash Mobile is a storefront of technology tools and applications, security standards, and business models that enables financial institutions, merchants and consumers to engage in customized mCommerce mobile payment services regardless of the cell phone make or model or the consumer’s current service providers. The account can also be linked to a stored value card (SVC), Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover or any merchant gift card that allows users to load funds into the account as well as withdraw money at an ATM. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: PayCash, mobile banking, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover

Del.icio.us Tags: mobile banking, bill payment, mobile phone, PayCash, un-banked, mobile phone, stored value cards, mCommerce