greenzap.com; What do you think

[tvaddict817]

Somebody in another forum I visit spammed http://www.greenzap.com as a way to get $25 for free. There don't seem to be any fees but it is a "too good to be true" site so I was wondering what the rest of you make of this.

[MatrixWatch]

I've spent about five minutes checking them out. They are actually a new payment company, not a get-rich-quick scheme.

They are initiating a similar incentive program that many banks have, where customers who sign up and refer friends are awarded a cash bonus in their account. However, it is often the case that the money will be taken back if you close your account within a year, and sometimes you have to have a certain amount in your account before you can spend it. I'd read up on this incentive a little more before getting involved.

They are marketing themselves as a global processor that will be an alternative to PayPal. They will probably capitalize on PayPal's poor reputation and get some customers, but I must warn everyone that PayPal's woes from the past few years have more to do with market forces than PayPal's administration. Many other of PayPal's competitors have found themselves in similar predicaments, and no doubt Green Zap will too.

GreenZap recently announced that their new CEO will be a guy named Alex Sonkin, the former CEO of Strategic Business Development (SBD), Inc., an international marketing and consulting company that specializes in the financial industry. So expect to see some creative marketing that is highly strategized to outmaneuver both PayPal and some of the other smaller competitors.

If GreenZap was smart, they will implement safe and secure policies that are more secure than PayPal's, while still allowing transactions to take place without too much red tape. It will mean making promises that address the fears that many merchants have of their account being frozen without warning, and that many customers have of never getting their money back from someone who just scammed them.

Safety and security is the commodity of the e-commerce processors, and GreenZap would do well to make that message central to its marketing campaign, rather than just throwing money at people to get them to join. Attracting customers is different than keeping customers, and I look forward to seeing what GreenZap will do to advance the latter after meeting the goals of the former.

Offering me $25 to signup with GreenZap shows me that they have the necessary capital to get a worldwide payment gateway moving, but it doesn't show me that they have the creativity to eliminate the problems and worries that PayPal has.