Firepay

Firepay Poker

The story of online payment service Firepay should be considered carefully by the competition. Firepay went belly up about a year ago, and their website still offers info for customers who may be "waiting for a deposit or withdrawal" and instructions on how to go about resolving their issue. Sad story? Yes. Warning tale for the industry? Kind of.

FirePay notified their members in December of 2007 that they would begin the process of shutting down later that same month. The UK-based online money transer and payment service shut its doors for good on Monday, December 10, 2007 when it no longer allowed users to add funds to their accounts or transfer money.

Like many of the so-called PayPal alternatives, FirePay never caught on at the global scale that such businesses require. Though the service claims a one time membership of 1.5 million users, it barely registers on Alexa and Compete when compared to PayPal -- which, incidentally, has nearly 200 million active accounts.

FirePay, when their website was still active, advertised the services such as Online FirePay EFT. With the Online FirePay EFT system, FirePay claimed that the transfer of funds was "quick and easy" and gave customers the choice of selecting between a variety of deposit and withdrawal methods. In addition, as with all of these online payment services, all of your personal information is kept "confidential", both from the business you are spending your money with and from members of the company itself. Unfortunately, claims of confidentiality and speedy payment are not uncommon in the online financial world.

Nevertheless, FirePay's merchant list contained some major corporations -- big names who will no longer be able to accept payments via the service, including Sony Online Entertainment and many online casinos and poker rooms. Having said that, FirePay was often accused of listing friendly merchants who would NOT take payment via their service, most infamously Skype.

FirePay was not known as a bastion of good business practices. One review, found at Rip Off Report (a website aimed at informing consumers of potential internet rip offs), tells of having his account closed without warning and when this customer attempted to collect the funds that were still in the account, he was blocked from doing so for "procedural reasons". This was in July of 2007 -- just as the company was planning to jettison its assets and leave their customers with no alternative but to FIND an alternative. Stories similar to this abound on internet reviews -- one customer complains of not one but two "bounced checks" he received as payment -- unheard of for a financial service -- and the complaint list is longer than the one-time list of customers. Not a good sign.

On a positive note, at the time of their demise, FirePay offered customers multiple free withdrawal options and gave plenty of warning, almost 6 months time to figure out where to put your money.

It cannot be overstated that the story of FirePay is one that companies like Click2Pay and Netteller can't ignore. Offer shoddy and less than honest business, and eventually even those customers desperate enough to risk getting ripped off will jump ship.