With the rise of online games, many have wondered what will happen to retail’s contribution to the industry. While there can be payment cards purchased at convenience stores, that’s not really an option for smaller companies or those just starting out. Enter Rixty, which is a payment solution for many online companies (mostly game related) and can also convert cash-only users to online spenders. We spoke with Rixty’s Vice President of Marketing Todd Smith and Lead Marketing Associate Paul De Barros about the companies offerings and a recent promotion with IJJI.
Could you describe what it is that Rixty does?
Todd Smith: We are an alternative payment platform designed to turn cash into online buying capability. So we serve game and website publishers and we give them the ability to sell their goods and services to the public. There’s about 70 million people that have about a trillion dollars in spending power but lack a credit card, and we provide a service for them to pay easily online. So a person who has cash could walk into a store at one of our 70,000 different locations or at a Coinstar machine and receive a redeemable receipt, or they could buy a Rixty card or a MoneyPak card – and any one of those methods could works with the site Rixty.com. We also added the ability for people to use checking accounts to fund their Rixty spending.
For game publishers it’s way to monetize these cash paying users that don’t have a PayPal account and don’t have credit cards. We don’t charge the users fees and we don’t ask for their info other than email and their age.
Talk to me about the recent giveaway at Facebook’s Rixty site.
Paul De Barros: That promotion is a two week deal and what we’re calling it is a G Coin promotion. We wanted people to come to the Rixty page and ‘liking’ the page they’re entered to win $15 worth of G Coin. [IJJI is] one of the leading game portals, and setting this up is designed to pull in new users and eyes and re-inform our current users about current games that IJJI has to offer.
We also wanted to highlight that IJJI has announced their award points program. It also enables current fans to participate in a current promotion by posting messages and getting the daily giveaway.
How did the promotion with IJJI specifically come about?
Paul De Barros: We have a very strong relationship with them and we threw ideas back and forth and this was a promotion and a method that was easy to implement. We posted some images and it was an easy way to get a message out there, using Facebook to pull in users. They have a strong Facebook presence so tapping into that and our forums lets us offer something to the fans.
Todd Smith: We’ve done a few different promotions with IJJI and this is our latest one. We wanted to be a little bit creative and try something new – also a key driver was engaging with our customers and utilizing the social capability in a way that’s fun and engaging. That was part of the idea, to have some fun and allow us to interact with our customer base. It’s easy because we have a relationship with IJJI they are a customer using our payment system.
How do you think promotions like this and the the Reward Points program drive users to online game portals like IJJI?
Todd Smith: They’ve had their rewards program for a while, but it was an important part of this [promotion] for the rewards program that there was a way of utilizing it for new and engaging challenges.
A graphic showing how Rixty does business.
How has Rixty’s business grown over the past couple years?
Todd Smith: Over the last couple years we’ve grown to over 70,000 locations for our retail distribution. We serve primarily the U.S. but we’re looking to expand oversees so that’s a future area of growth. We’ve signed many publishers so that users can use it for 1,000 sites online. It’s mostly used for games and other forms of digital entertainment. We’re always trying to grow our number of publishers.
We are always trying to expand our user footprint. There’s eBillme that allows people to load their Rixty account with their bank system. It’s like a telephone bill, but then it’s loaded into your Rixty account. This doesn’t require a visit to a retail store, but it’s still anonymous.
What do you think is appealing to both users and game publishers about using the Rixty platform that they can’t get on their own virtual payments system?
Todd Smith: We bring access to cash paying users. We have a large customer base and we can bring that to a new publisher. But at the moment we form the relationship, we give them 70,000 points of presence around the U.S. and it requires no cost for them and only a little integration to make it work; we’re talking single digit hours. They don’t have to get involved with distributing, no management of the challenge. We’re able to do this through the partnership, but we’re able to work with them if they have their own cards; we still bring a large number of locations where their cards are not. It’s important that it is an incremental amount of buyers that does not cannibalize credit card users. These are guaranteed payments – charge-backs can be a problem with credit cards and it can be a time consuming process, but with us all payments are guaranteed. It’s a low friction way to expand their sales to their user base.
Why make your service available with Coinstar Vouchers and Green Dot MoneyPaks instead of just Rixty Cards?
Todd Smith: We’re just trying to have as large a footprint as possible. All these options means require a visit in a store, so we want to have as many locations as we can. So by having Coinstar, we are in their tens of thousands of locations, and 100,000 more with the prepaid card and 50,000 with the MoneyPak, and there’s little overlap between them. We want to have the largest presence of online cash payment in the U.S.
We don’t take any fees for these products and [the customer] gets full value. The physical medium is different, but its otherwise the same. Coinstar allows people to dump in coins; some allow bills, but it can be any amount of coins. They’re a great partner and they have very high awareness scores with the public.
So if there’s no fees from the transaction . . . how does Rixty make money?
Todd Smith: The cost of running the business is taken out of the sales and that’s the way everyone wants it to be because every time you add fees you decrease enthusiasm. Rixty and the publishers are sharing the costs. When a person buys a MoneyPak, they pay a small service fee, but we refund that when they use it at Rixty. To put it another way, a retailer doesn’t take away extra money with a credit card usage and neither do we.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Todd Smith: We’re the only program certified with the Online Safety Protection Act. We restrict kids access to games for their safety. So not only are we anonymous and secure, but parents love it.
If a cash paying user wants to buy an iPod they can do it in a store. For an online game, there isn’t that option and that’s where we’re filling a important niche but also a large need to buy these [virtual items] that haven’t existed for that long that can engage in an entertainment experience where there isn’t that local other option.
Todd, Matt thanks.
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