buySAFE blog

VeriSign Announces Partnership and Investment in buySAFE, Inc.

A major announcement and copy of the press release just issued by VeriSign, Inc. 

VeriSign Adds buySAFE Merchant Bonding Solution

to its Offerings for Online Businesses

Global Leader in SSL Security Enables Merchants to Enhance Consumer Trust with Security and Verification of Merchant Reliability

BALTIMORE – August 4, 2009– eTail East Conference, Booth #27 – VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world, is broadening its portfolio of trust-building solutions for online commerce with buySAFE, Inc.  buySAFE provides online merchants a bonding solution that inspects the merchant’s business, monitors their performance and enables shoppers to bond their purchases, which has been shown to significantly increase Web site conversion, sales and customer loyalty.

Under terms of a new alliance, VeriSign will promote the buySAFE solution along with its globally trusted VeriSign® Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates and VeriSign Secured® Seal solutions.  Together, the two offerings make it easier than ever for online businesses to cultivate trust with consumers. For more information, go to www.verisign.com/buysafe

VeriSign® SSL Certificates with the VeriSign Secured® Seal help assure consumers that their transactions and personal information remain secure.  buySAFE’s bonding solution assures shoppers that the merchant is reliable, stable and able to deliver on the promises made.  By increasing shopper trust and confidence in the merchant, buySAFE increases Web site conversion, generates more repeat buyers and increases merchant profitability.¹  As a result, online shoppers and merchants both benefit.

“As the most trusted brand on the Internet, VeriSign has long provided solutions that help online merchants boost consumer confidence by establishing trusted relationships, and today’s announcement continues this commitment,” said Chris Babel, VeriSign’s senior vice president and general manager, authentication. “Combined with VeriSign SSL protection and the VeriSign Secured Seal, buySAFE’s bonding solution enables online merchants to build greater confidence with online shoppers, helping drive conversion rates and revenues.” 

buySAFE is a two-part trust solution. The buySAFE Seal provides an explicit third party endorsement of a merchant’s quality and reliability, thereby helping eliminate consumer uncertainty.  The buySAFE bond option in checkout provides shoppers a choice to purchase a bond with two benefits: a full guarantee of the transaction terms of sale up to $25,000, and thirty days of identity theft protection service.² The benefits of the bond option provide uncertain shoppers an added level of confidence, which in turn makes them more likely to buy. buySAFE has been shown to increase Web site conversion 10.6 percent on average, making buySAFE’s free solution highly profitable for online merchants.³  Together, the VeriSign and BuySAFE solutions address the two key sources of consumer uncertainty: information security and merchant reliability. 

 

 “We are excited about our alliance with VeriSign, as we offer highly complementary solutions for online merchants,” said Jeff Grass, president and CEO of buySAFE.  “VeriSign’s leadership in authenticating and securing Web sites now combines with buySAFE’s expertise in ensuring confident, fully-guaranteed online shopping through bonding. At a time when consumer confidence is low and online shoppers feel uncertain, the confidence that online merchants can build with VeriSign and buySAFE is invaluable.”

The VeriSign Secured Seal appears on Web pages of merchants whose identities have been verified by VeriSign through SSL certification. Site visitors click on the seal to verify a merchant’s site information in real time. Sites secured by VeriSign SSL and that show the VeriSign Secured Seal have been shown to experience lower shopping cart abandonment and increased visitor-to-sales conversions.⁴

¹  Testing by 12 online merchants (including many in the Internet Retailer Top 500) across 11,200 separate purchases, showed significant increases in repeat buyers who experienced buySAFE 30, 60 and 90 days later.  Your company’s results may vary.

 2 Available to United States based shoppers only.  Not available to shoppers in some states.

³  Average buySAFE Impact Test results based on A-B tests conducted by 45 separate online merchants over 5,228,801 online site visits.  Approximately 50% of visitors were shown the buySAFE Seal and Bond option, and 50% were not.  The average relative increase in conversion for all merchants was 10.6%.  Every merchant participating in the test showed a positive conversion increase of at least 4.5%.  Your company’s results may vary.

⁴  Based on customer reported results. Case studies can be found at: http://www.verisign.com/ssl/ssl-information-center/ssl-case-studies/index.html  Your company’s results may vary. 

About buySAFE

buySAFE, Inc. provides eCommerce bonding services that build consumer confidence and provide significant financial and brand building benefits for online merchants.  buySAFE’s bonding solution is backed by the financial strength of Liberty Mutual, Travelers, and ACE USA and its identity theft protection services are provided in partnership with Assurant Solutions.  With over 4 billion views of the buySAFE Seal, 20 million bonded purchases and over 3,000 buySAFE Bonded Merchants, buySAFE is widely recognized as a leader in providing confidence and safety for online buyers and increased sales and profits for online merchants.  buySAFE’s investors include Grotech Ventures, Core Capital Partners, VeriSign, Inc. and The Hartford Financial Services Group.  For more information, visit:  http://www.buysafe.com

 

About VeriSign  

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ VRSN) is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times each day, VeriSign helps companies and consumers all over the world engage in communications and commerce with confidence. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.

VeriSign Contacts

Christina Rohall, crohall@verisign.com, 650-336-4663

Investor Relations: Nancy Fazioli, ir@verisign.com, 650-426-5146

buySAFE Contact

Hans Dreyer, hdreyer@buysafe.com, 703-778-4445 x110

Any surety bond or insurance policy or contract issued or sold as part of the buySAFE services will be issued and sold by buySAFE, a licensed insurance producer.  buySAFE, Inc. is an agent for the insurance company that will issue the bond.  VeriSign is not a licensed insurance producer or insurance company.  VeriSign does not have the authority to solicit, negotiate or sell surety bonds or any other insurance policies or contracts.  By promoting, negotiating or selling the buySAFE services, VeriSign is not soliciting, negotiating or selling surety bonds or other insurance policies or contracts.

Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause VeriSign's actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the uncertainty of future revenue and profitability and potential fluctuations in quarterly operating results due to such factors as the inability of VeriSign to successfully develop and market new products and services and customer acceptance of any new products or services, including VeriSign SSL and VeriSign Secured Seal solutions;  the possibility that VeriSign’s announced new services may not result in additional customers, profits or revenues; and increased competition and pricing pressures. More information about potential factors that could affect the company's business and financial results is included in VeriSign's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2008 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. VeriSign undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.

©2009  VeriSign, Inc. All rights reserved. VeriSign, the VeriSign logo, VeriSign Secured,  the Checkmark Circle logo, and other trademarks, service marks, and designs are registered or unregistered trademarks of VeriSign, Inc., and its subsidiaries in the United States and in foreign countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

# # #

Steve Woda, Founder and Chairman of buySAFE, Pursues New Entrepreneurial Ventures

Today, I want to personally share with you the news that Steve Woda, buySAFE’s Founder, Chairman, and Senior VP - Product & Strategy, has decided to leave the company to pursue new entrepreneurial interests. Steve has also joined buySAFE’s Board of Advisors so that the company can continue to benefit from his guidance and deep insights into eCommerce and Internet trust and safety.

Steve announced his decision on his blog today at http://www.stevewoda.com/2009/03/thank-you-buysafe.html, and he shared this quote...

”After almost nine years of building buySAFE, I am leaving the Company in very capable hands, with fresh funding, and the brightest future that the Company has ever had. It has been a deeply satisfying experience to create something valuable, and I want to sincerely thank our customers, our partners, my colleagues and the many investors who made buySAFE possible. I am obviously looking forward to my next adventure, but I am also very much looking forward to buySAFE’s continued success over the coming months and years.”

Steve founded buySAFE and developed its early business/technology plans and management team. He combined his background in surety bonding with his expertise in online markets to develop the first mass retail application of surety bonds to protect online purchasers while simultaneously driving up revenue for online merchants.

This innovation has benefited both consumers, who rely on third-party validation to know whom to trust, and merchants, who experience increased sales and profits when they increase buyer confidence. Since Steve founded buySAFE, it has bonded over 19 million online transactions, protected millions of online shoppers, and created tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue for thousands of eCommerce merchants. Today, the buySAFE Seal™ is viewed over 100 million times every month.

While Steve has been engaged in and managed virtually every aspect of the business operations, his most important contributions have been to buySAFE’s product development. He led the Product Team which developed all of the Company’s core products, including the buySAFE Seal™, website bonding, the Safe Shopping Rating™ and most recently buySAFE Shopping Advisor™, which integrates the Safe Shopping Rating™ into all popular search engine results.

Without Steve there would be no buySAFE. His creativity, imagination and persistence gave birth to the concept, the company, and the products that have changed the face of eCommerce. It’s been an honor to work with him.

Jeff Grass
buySAFE CEO & President

A Holiday Gift from buySAFE... Shopping Advisor 3.0!

As you may have noticed, we just released a new version of Shopping Advisor for Internet Explorer!

Before giving you the highlights of this release, we want you to know that you will not need to re-install Shopping Advisor. This upgrade automatically occurred when you started your browser (If you haven't yet received the upgrade, you will the next time you start your browser).

What is new? As many of you know, we have been receiving lots of terrific feedback from you over the last several months, and based on that feedback, we have modified several key features to provide you with a better experience as follows:

• More risk-free Shopping
  You no longer need to be logged into your buySAFE account in order to receive full protection for the purchases you make through Shopping Advisor.
  
  If you purchase items from Bonded Merchants via the Safe Shopping Portal, we will automatically issue a bond guarantee (up to $25,000) for your purchase and as well as complimentary ID theft protection for 30 days.  You can then access your buySAFE account to get more details about your protection.

• Product Recommendations at your fingertips
  Product recommendations from the Safe Shopping Portal will automatically appear at the top of the search results pages on Google, Yahoo and MSN / Live, so that you can have immediate access to millions of products from the most trusted merchants on the Internet. 

• Better search results
  We have improved the Safe Shopping Portal results to give you more product selection.

• Instant access to Safe Shopping Ratings
  Click on the Rating button and you can immediately check the rating of any online store.

Try out these new features and please, keep on sending us your feedback and your ideas on how to better serve online shoppers!  We really love to hear from you.

Steve

buySAFE in TECH BISNOW

A fun article about buySAFE today in the local Washington, DC technology news…you can see it here: "www.bisnow.com - DC Tech News". (Thanks David!)

For keeping tabs on the local DC tech scene, this is a great newsletter to subscribe to.

New Partner for buySAFE Bonded Shopping Network: Channel Intelligence

buySAFE Bonded Shopping Network (BSN) now has Channel Intelligence (CI)  as a Product Syndication integrator. We welcome CI into this partnership!

CI is a product data technology and marketing company helping some of the best retailers and manufacturers make their products easier for consumers to find and buy on the Internet and in local retail stores. Many of the web's most successful online merchants trust CI to help ensure the growth and success of their businesses.

This relationship enables the premier retailers using CI's SellCast™ Retailer Solutions the ability to list their products on the Bonded Shopping Network. The BSN, as you may know, is the first online advertising network that brings together shoppers interested in risk-free shopping with merchants seeking a risk-free way to advertise online.

The combination of the hundreds of millions of Stock-keeping Units (SKUs) across CI's merchants with the unique power of the BSN to direct shopper traffic creates two major shifts in the market. First, CI merchants can now select a channel with millions of new shoppers and, second, buySAFE shoppers will now have easy access to an enormous selection of inventory from many of the most recognized brands online in an entirely risk-free shopping environment!

The Bonded Shopping Network expands buySAFE's position as the leader in risk-free commerce. The BSN is comprised of the buySAFE Shopping Advisor™, our revolutionary desktop shopping application which makes shopping online completely secure, buySAFE’s own shopping engine (www.buysafeshopping.com), and several other popular Internet shopping destinations. Bonded Merchants enjoy the benefits of a risk-free, cost per sale fee structure on the BSN.

It was a natural choice for buySAFE and CI to align, given buySAFE's value proposition of connecting shoppers who want risk-free shopping with the best merchants on the web. buySAFE is thrilled to work with CI in the future.

A little about Channel Intelligence:

The CI product database is capable of storing, managing, optimizing and analyzing hundreds of millions of products every day. CI is a partner company of Internet Capital Group (Nasdaq: ICGE) and Aweida Capital Management and is headquartered in Orlando, Fla., with offices in Geneva, Switzerland and London, England. You can learn more about them at www.channelintelligence.com.

The Launch of Shopping Advisor!

I’m sorry I've been away for a while, but we've been really busy and now you’ll know why...

Yesterday was a BIG day in buySAFE’s history as we officially announced the public beta launch of buySAFE Shopping Advisor – a totally new and unique desktop application that enables risk-free online shopping with two key benefits:

1. Smarter and safer Internet shopping - everywhere 
   A Safe Shopping Rating is automatically inserted into the search results of all major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and eBay) to give the user the information they need to shop smarter and safer.


2. An alternative risk-free shopping channel
   A Safe Shopping Portal, accessible via a click on Shopping Advisor, provides alternative product choices from thousands of merchants where every purchase is automatically guaranteed with a Bond of up to $25,000 and Identity Theft protection for 30 days – at no cost to the buyer.  It’s really very cool, you should try it!

The buySAFE Shopping Advisor is a totally free desktop application that plugs directly into a user’s Internet browser. It’s completely safe and secure and won’t slow down the browser as it only works after the browser has fully rendered the web page being visited.  You can see a recorded press overview by clicking here or for our full press release about Shopping Advisor launch click here.

Our goal with Shopping Advisor is to create a true win-win-win for shoppers, merchants and buySAFE.

Shopping Advisor is designed to make internet shopping safer and more secure for consumers in two ways - 1) by arming them with the information they need to make smart and safe shopping decisions (Shopping Advisor assigns a Safe Shopping Rating to 300,000+ eCommerce websites in the U.S. based on an objective assessment of their use of the normal best practices that ensure a safe and secure shopping and experience) and 2) by providing access to an alternative risk-free shopping channel where every purchase via the Safe Shopping Portal is automatically guaranteed with a bond up to $25,000 per purchase and the buyer receives 30 days of free ID Theft protection (covers ID theft issues regardless of cause). All of this is FREE for the shoppers who use Shopping Advisor. Period.

Our normal bonding service for merchants is a free service (when they use our Buyers Choice pricing model) that builds trust with shoppers, helping the merchant convert more visitors to buyers. We've tested buySAFE on literally hundreds of merchant sites and across millions of transactions and have found we have a materially positive impact on website conversion – typically 4-15%, with an average of 6.8%. Our free bonding solution gives buyers an option - if they so choose - to purchase a Bond Guarantee at checkout, typically for about 3% of the purchase price to fully guarantee all the terms of sale (in other words, bonding typically runs about $30 on a $1000 purchase). Our testing shows that just giving the shopper the option to buy the bond makes them more likely to buy (whether they choose to buy the bond or not).

When using Shopping Advisor, the buyer no longer has to pay the 3% fee but rather we now automatically include the bond for free.  We’ve also added 30 days of ID Theft protection for free on each purchase because we wanted to make sure we fully address the two primary concerns Internet shoppers have – merchant non-performance and identity theft.  Click here to see my press video overview for more details on this topic.  Merchants pay buySAFE a referral fee, but ONLY if a shopper actually makes a purchase. Pretty much every buySAFE Merchant I’ve talked to has told me they really like this concept because buySAFE is able to send them buyers that are trust motivated (vs. just cheapest price) and they pay a % of the sale price, but only if we actually generate a sale. This cost-per-sale pricing model makes it essentially a risk-free advertising solution for the merchant.

buySAFE wins because we're succeeding on fulfilling our vision of making internet shopping safer for buyers and more profitable for merchants and hopefully building successful business in the process so that we can rollout additional tools like this to make internet shopping safe.

I'd highly encourage you to download Shopping Advisor and give it a try. Click here for the Shopping Advisor download page. It's our first day after the public beta launch so I'm sure there are lots of areas for improvement but we’re working hard to make it a really powerful and valuable shopping tool. Please send us all the suggestions you have and we'll work hard to incorporate as many as we can.

Many thanks. Jeff

buySAFE To Exhibit at Internet Retailer 2008 Conference June 9-12

The world’s largest e-retailing event, the Internet Retailer 2008 Conference & Exhibition takes place on June 9-12 at Chicago's new McCormick Place West.

Will you be there to find cool stuff to drive sales and margins? If yes, then don’t forget to stop by the buySAFE booth (#642), to catch a live demo of the new buySAFE Bonded Shopping Network.

Here’s why so many merchants are excited about the Bonded Shopping Network:

 The Network offers a Performance-based Advertising Channel, where a merchant pays a percentage-of-sale commission ONLY on those buyers referred through the Bonded Shopping Network ONLY when they make a purchase – NO-RISK ADVERTISING!

 The Bonded Shopping Network refers MORE Shoppers and More Motivated Shoppers – they know they want to buy ... they only need to find a merchant they TRUST to hit the “BUY NOW” button.

 Bonded Shopping drives Higher Conversion at Merchant websites. Shopper Confidence = Higher Sales. Millions of transactions tell us that buySAFE’s solution increases conversions by 6.8%. Plus, higher repeat customers and higher customer satisfaction.

If you’re an online merchant, the Bonded Shopping Network represents a great no-risk opportunity to draw more shoppers, and convert more of them into buyers. To learn more about our Bonded Shopping Network, click here.

And see you in Chicago!

The New New Internet – buySAFE CEO to speak at Web 2.0 for Business Conference

Executive Biz of Washington, DC is putting on a great Web 2.0 conference this week on Oct. 31 (Accelerator) and Nov. 1 (for Business). If you are going to be in the area and are interested in attending you can learn more about it at their website http://tnni07.thenewnewinternet.com/web-2-0-accelerator

They’ve lined up a great group of speakers to cover a wide range of topics related to Web 2.0. I’ll be speaking on a panel called “Maintaining Security while embracing Web 2.0 Open-ness” with Hart Rossman – Chief Security Technologist at SAIC and Steve Orrin – Director of Security Solutions at Intel. You can see info on many of the speakers here  http://tnni07.thenewnewinternet.com/speakers#grass

The panel will have bunch of very different perspectives so it should be highly informative. I hope to see you there.

buySAFE News: buySAFE Forms Strategic Partnership With Leading Merchant Account Provider e-onlinedata

This is a great partnership for buySAFE as e-onlinedata is a major player in the payments space.  They are the first of many future payment company partners we will be working with to cross promote our products.  buySAFE is a very natural value add for payments companies as we provide a major impact on merchant sales (via increased conversion) and since our core service is free, it’s easy to bundle with a payment companies suite of services provided.

We’re thrilled to partner with e-onlinedata and we’ve been quite impressed with their team and their product offerings for merchants.

Are You Going to eBay Live?

As many readers of this blog are aware, eBay Live 2007 in Boston is less than 60 days away. Each year, the buySAFE team looks forward to this event with great anticipation, as it gives us a chance to spend time with our many merchant customers, as well as the eBay community at large. It also gives us a great opportunity to see some of the interesting things that other eBay certified solutions providers in the space are doing.

In years past, we’ve invested heavily in this show, sending a large buySAFE contingent and maintaining a big booth on the floor of the convention. Although this approach has been very effective for raising the overall awareness of buySAFE among the eBay community, we found that it has not always provided enough opportunities for one-on-one interactions with our current customers and most other service providers would attest, it doesn’t provide a good return on the high investment required to have a booth. Likewise, the format is not as effective as it could be in providing opportunities for us to meet with the prospective customers who can most benefit from our service.

So, this year we’re taking a slightly different approach to eBay Live. While we’ll still be sending a large group of buySAFE employees to eBay Live, we’ve decided not to display on the exhibit floor. Instead, we will be doing several things to ensure that we have the opportunity to meet with those sellers interested in buySAFE either for their eBay sales or for their website:

1) Scheduled On-Site Business Impact Meetings – For current and prospective customers, buySAFE will be scheduling one-on-one meetings to discuss conversion impact results (actual and forecasted) for individual businesses. We will be proactively reaching out to specific businesses, but please contact us at customersupport@buysafe.com if you’d like to schedule a time to meet with a buySAFE representative at the show.

2) buySAFE Lunch Seminar – “eBay and Beyond – A Primer for Multi-Channel Merchants” – During eBay Live, buySAFE will hold a lunch seminar for current and prospective customers that focuses on issues faced by merchants looking to utilize eBay as part of a multi-channel e-commerce strategy. This seminar will feature speakers from top companies in the industry, and will include a free lunch at a premier waterfront restaurant in Boston, courtesy of buySAFE. Space for this seminar is extremely limited, so please contact us at customersupport@buysafe.com if you’d like to be considered for an invitation to this event.

3) Participation in eBay Developers Conference – Representatives from buySAFE’s product management team will be participating in the eBay Developers Conference, and will also be available to answer any technical or development questions you might have.

4) Seller Meet & Greet. Over the past few years the Seller Meet & Greet event, for which buySAFE has been the primary sponsor, has been a huge success. Last year, there were an estimated 700-800 attendees at the event which takes place the evening before the 1^st day of eBay Live. The Seller Meet & Greet is a community driven event and one that we are big fans of. This year, its still a little uncertain as to whether the community will be having it again, but if so, you can expect us to be there again as a supporter. We hope you’ll also attend.

In taking this approach, we believe that we’ll be better able to spend quality time with merchants without the hustle and bustle that often accompanies trying to hold a meaningful conversation on a tradeshow floor. Likewise, by alleviating the logistical burden of preparing for the event (i.e. booth shipment, signage, tchotchkes, etc.), we can devote more time to focusing on providing merchants like you the information you really want to know – what impact buySAFE is having or will have on your business. We’ve built some very robust analytic tools to specifically measure how much buySAFE increases your website’s conversion rate, average transaction sizes and repeat buyer rates, so we want to make sure you use them to understand how buySAFE helps your business.

An ancillary benefit of not having a booth at eBay Live is that it will allow us to spread our tradeshow budget across several new events. As those who read this blog know, buySAFE has been very busy since the last eBay Live. Perhaps our biggest accomplishment since that time was making buySAFE available for merchant websites, as opposed to just eBay, Overstock.com Auctions and TIAS. In so doing, we’ve also opened up buySAFE to an entirely new group of customers, who attend not only eBay Live, but also events like Internet Retailer, Shop.org and eTail. By investing more appropriately in our eBay presence, we are able to ensure a significant presence at these and other events where we can introduce buySAFE to others who can benefit from our service.

We’re anxious to put this new approach into action, and I look forward to seeing all of you at eBay Live. Since space is so limited, if you’d like to be considered for a slot in either the business impact meetings or the lunch seminar, drop us a line today at customersupport@buysafe.com.

buySAFE, the largest issuer of surety bonds in the world?

Last Wednesday, during the middle of the night, someone bought the 12,000,000^th item online that was bonded by buySAFE.  It’s amazing how many transactions a day are now being covered by the buySAFE bond guarantee. The last time I checked, we were averaging something between one bond issued every 4 to 5 seconds, every minute of the day.

Although the surety industry in the United States has been around for over a century and its multi-billion dollar a year business, I believe that buySAFE might just be the largest issuer of surety bonds in the country, and therefore likely in the world.  A big congratulations to everyone out there who has ever purchased (or will in the future buy) an item online guaranteed with a buySAFE bond.  Shopper by shopper, transaction by transaction, we are on our way to fulfilling our mission of making every online transaction trusted, reliable and virtually risk-free for buyers and in the process helping those merchants using buySAFE grow their sales via increased conversion, more repeat buyers and higher average transaction sizes.

Another Top eTailer – Home Décor Products - Adopts buySAFE

In case you missed it, Home Décor Products – the internet’s leading home improvement retailer – just announced they are now a buySAFE Certified Merchant. 

You can already see buySAFE on most of their sites, including www.hechinger.com, www.barbecues.com, www.poolclick.com, www.absolutehome.com, www.knobsandthings.com, www.chefscorner.com, and www.christmascatalog.com. The company's www.HomeClick.com will also be integrating buySAFE in the next few months.  We’re excited to see Home Décor Products, a true leader in eCommerce with a broad collection of heavily trafficked sites, adopt the buySAFE trust solution.  This follows on the heels of other big name etailers who have recently adopted buySAFE as well, including Infinity Resources’ www.DVDPlanet.com, and leading tech and electronics retailers www.CompSource.com and www.Tech4Less.com. 

We’re quite thrilled to see such rapid adoption of buySAFE by many of the biggest and best merchants online as they understand how critically important it is to provide their shoppers the most trusted shopping experience possible. buySAFE helps reinforce their brands and the trust they have already built with our unique bonding solution – in partnership with some of the most trusted companies in the world including Liberty Mutual, Travelers and ACE USA - that provides the internet’s only explicit third-party endorsement of a merchant’s reliability and trustworthiness – backed by our willingness to put our money on where our mouth is and guarantee buyer purchases with a bond guarantee. Adding buySAFE to these trusted websites, creates a powerful combination that drives higher website conversion and increases increase repeat buyers. 

Stay tuned everyone, there are many more merchants of all sizes on the way!

buySAFE Adds Three New Enterprise Merchants

While buySAFE is primarily available to merchants that use one of our distribution channel partners – e.g. MIVA, Cart32 (in a couple weeks), Zoovy, etc. or via online marketplaces like eBay, Overstock.com Auctions or TIAS.com, larger merchants can also use buySAFE by integrating directly via the buySAFE API.  It’s a pretty quick integration that typically takes only 1-2 weeks.   

         

Three leading eCommerce merchants announced today that they’ve just integrated buySAFE this way.  ACityDiscount, Carter’s Fine Jewelry and CompSource all added the buySAFE trust solution to their websites.  You can learn more about this at http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=211449   

    

Why did these big merchants with trusted brands do this?  They did this because they know that a very strong endorsement of their reliability and trustworthiness via a trusted third party who is willing to financially guarantee its endorsement (e.g. buySAFE and its partners Liberty Mutual, Travelers & ACE USA) will increase buyer trust and website conversion rates.  When shoppers feel more confident they are more likely to make a purchase, they typically spend more and they are more likely to come back and buy again in the future. 

buySAFE News Update

I’ve been a little remiss on keeping up the buySAFE blog as of late.  That said, there have been lots of great things happening at buySAFE that are important to know about.  The top three are:

1) buySAFE was covered in a ComparsonsEngines.com article entitled “The buySAFE Revolution – 2007”.  Brian was quite perceptive in connecting the dots to see where buySAFE is headed.  If you haven’t read it yet, you should.

2) buySAFE partners with Cart32.  We added another great distribution partner and we’ve been really impressed with the team at Cart32. There was also a great article about them eCommerce-guide.com in recently.  An announcement on launch will be coming soon…
3) buySAFE closed another round of financing. We’re continuing to grow quickly and invest in our business. We expect 2007 to be a big year for buySAFE.

More to come!