Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

VISA and  CyberSource Corporation  today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Visa to purchase CyberSource, a leading provider of electronic payment, risk management and payment security solutions to online merchants at a price of $26.00 per share, or total consideration of approximately $2.0 billion to be paid with cash on hand.

CyberSource is an established industry leader that plays a role in processing approximately 25 percent of all eCommerce dollars transacted in the United States.  The company serves more than 295,000 merchants through its CyberSource and Authorize.Net branded solutions. I have implemented Authorize.net in a new B2B marketplace called Ketera Network. CyberSource clients include British Airways, Home Depot, Facebook, Google and many small businesses.

The acquisition of CyberSource will result in a compelling combination whose assets and expertise are expected to drive long-term growth by:

• Accelerating the growth of the eCommerce category thereby also increasing the usage of Visa debit, prepaid and credit products for online purchases.
• Drawing on Visa’s financial institution relationships and global presence to more rapidly drive international expansion of CyberSource’s products and services.  Today the majority of CyberSource’s revenues are generated in the United States, leaving tremendous opportunity for global growth.
• Building on CyberSource’s relationships with merchants to expand the adoption and enhance the functionality of other Visa eCommerce solutions such as Rightcliq.
• Delivering best-in-class fraud management services to accelerate adoption of CyberSource solutions.
• Increasing adoption of CyberSource’s secure payment data hosting solutions to address a growing merchant need.

These benefits will be realized by merchants and financial institutions alike.  Together, Visa and CyberSource will help merchants increase revenue through global growth while minimizing monetary loss from fraud and provide them with fast and efficient connectivity to multiple payment networks, including Visa. For financial institutions acquirers, Visa will deliver added value by providing new business referrals from eCommerce merchants.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

RBI has allowed Paypal to facilitate transactions in India, user can withdraw from Indian banks who uses Paypal to sell products/services. RBI has earlier suspended Paypal operations since Paypal needed specific approvals to allow personal inward remittances to India.

The Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 stipulates that no person other than the RBI, shall commence or operate a payment system, except with an authorization issued by the RBI under the provisions of the Act.

Paypal agreed to RBI rules and regulations and as per new guidelines exporters need to fill out new ‘Export Code’ when they request a withdrawal. An Importer Exporter Code (IEC) is allotted to exporters in India after they provide detailed information on their businesses, including their income tax identification number.

What is an IEC?

IEC Code is unique 10 digit code issued by DGFT – Director General of Foreign Trade , Ministry of Commerce, Government of India to Indian Companies. IEC Code is mandatory. No person or entity shall make any Import or Export without IEC Code Number.

The online IEC application form can be downloaded from here iec-form.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Have you analysed how many features of your product are effectively used, in most of the products 10% of product features are mainly used and 60% of the feature are good to have features and rest 20% are very rarely used and 10% are never been used. So why not concentrate on 10% of the features and evolve into product instead of running behind in accumulating features mainly to counter competition.

Most of the VC’s reject you stating “its a damn feature not a product”, they don’t see any value proposition in it and raises concern in its adoption. Before adopting by millions of users worldwide Isn’t twitter just a status message feature, now its most reputed company. Paypal is one of the best example i can cite in this context, it has become a big company/product in itself. They realized early and understood what users need and understood users are not liking the complex cryptography based solution. Besides this one has to abandon the extra features which will make new users confuse about the solution, in short they should KISS (Keep it simple stupid)

How to determine feature can be turned into product -

There is no straight away answer for it, check for user adoption and make a call.

What’s your take on it, do share.

-Hitesh, vcbytes.com