Javien Unveils Payment Gateway Tailored for New Media

Michelle Megna

Updated · Jan 28, 2008

Javien Digital Payment Solutions today unveiled the Javien New Media Payment Gateway, a hosted transaction-payment gateway tailored specifically to the needs of companies that sell digital assets such as music, movies, games and software, whether sold online or by mobile phones.

The company claims to be one of the first to offer a one-stop-shop with a single login for e-tailers selling digital content.

Before this release, companies faced a considerable challenge when it came to selecting and managing all the vendors and partners needed to deliver digital content successfully to their customers, said Javien CEO Leslie Poole.

“We are the first credit card gateway for new media, which has its own specific needs,” said Poole. “It’s more complex than selling tangible goods because they handle all sorts of payment models, micro-payments, subscriptions and royalties, and they need to be able to quickly change pricing models as needed.”

Poole said that even if sellers of digital goods were able to gather and implement the best technologies and payment gateway providers for their unique needs, ongoing management becomes an administrative burden, requiring more manual reconciliation of reports from various systems.

The integration of the Javien New Media Payment Gateway within Javien’s Total Commerce Solution is designed to reduce these tasks while also providing a merchant portal that centralizes customer care.

Streamlining Sales and Customer Service
“Our platform doesn’t just deliver the full breadth of technology needed to successfully sell music, movies and games — it also streamlines the entire range of merchant processes by providing a central management point for administering billing and customer care,” said Poole. “When merchants are encountering an issue with processing a purchase, they need more from its payment processing partners than an e-mail form and a response 48 hours later. If merchants are using our platform and payment gateway, they can access an actual person who will help address the issue as well as a way to track its resolution.”

The Javien New Media Payment Gateway, with payment processing handled through Optimal Payments, provides real-time authorization for VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners, debit cards and electronic check payments. Additionally, the ability to accept, process and settle multiple currencies eliminates exchange fees for consumers. The gateway also includes fraud protection capabilities utilizing the 3-D Secure protocol developed by Visa.

Poole said selling digital content involves a wide range of specialized needs. In addition to requiring a mechanism to deliver the digital media to the customer, merchants must also be able to accept a variety of payment methods, going beyond credit and debit cards, in order to meet customer preferences. These include PayPal accounts and the capability to directly bill cellular and landline telephones.

Online sellers of “soft goods” also need options to implement multiple pricing models — not just for a la carte purchases of single digital files, but also for subscriptions of any term (day, week, month), pay-per-view or pay-per-download and even parent-child sponsorships and free-trial or discount programs.

Finally, because individual digital assets are often low-ticket items (under $5), sellers need a way to minimize payment processing fees and to protect their margins. The Javien Total Commerce Solution simultaneously answers all these needs, said Poole, leveraging Javien Micropay’s adaptive micropayment technology to aggregate and batch transactions according to business rules and minimize transaction-processing fees.

Current Javien customers can implement the Javien New Media Payment Gateway with a few clicks by signing up through the Javien DPS 8.0 merchant administration portal. New customers can use the gateway as an a la carte option or as part of Javien’s Total Commerce Solution. Optimal Payments provides the payment processing support for this new Javien product.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.





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