Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

Escrow.com revenue dips on China and account verification but is rebounding

by — Domain Services 15 Comments

Popular domain escrow service takes a revenue hit but shows signs up improvement.

Freelancer Limited, the company that owns online escrow company Escrow.com, has posted its results (pdf) for the first half of 2017.

Gross payment volume (GPV) at Escrow.com in the first half of 2017 was down 24% (year-over-year) to $209 million. Net revenue was down 28% to $3.1 million.

The company cites two reasons for the fall: the burst of the Chinese domain bubble and the implementation of account verification (aka “know your customer”) controls.

China’s GPV was $25 million in the first half of 2017 compared to $52 million in the first half of 2016. It peaked in the second half of 2015 when it was $89 million. This chart shows the impact of China:

While China is down, the rest of the world is also down. Escrow.com attributes the additional decrease to account verification requirements put in place at the end of 2016. In its earnings presentation, the company said the process has resulted in churn because some users are reluctant to provide identification. I imagine that part of it is not reluctance so much as not wanting to go through the hassle depending on the size of the transaction. The process can include providing proof of identity and business documents.

Obviously, Escrow.com would prefer not to put customers through this hassle. Its presentation says the identity verification process makes it compliant with the US Patriot Act. It also plans to roll out enhancements to the process this quarter.

Despite the drop in the first half of this year, there’s some good news for the company: it appears to be rebounding. GPV in the second quarter of the year was up 16% compared to the first quarter.

Share3
Share4
+1
Email
Shares 14

Domain name escrow price and services guide

by — Domain Services 13 Comments

A comparison of popular domain name escrow options.

The domain name escrow landscape has changed in recent years. Escrow.com is under new ownership, Payoneer has added a service and some escrow services have closed.

With this in mind, I spent some time comparing the services based on features, payment options and fees.

I limited my analysis to Escrow.com, Payoneer and Escrow.domains (the latter being a legal service of Greenberg & Lieberman). You might consider other services for secure domain transactions including those offered by Sedo and Afternic.

Each escrow service has different fees both for the overall transaction and the methods of payment. Here’s a comparison: Click to continue reading…

Share10
Share63
+11
Email
Shares 74

GGRG short domains report bolstered with Escrow.com data

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Escrow.com contributes $16 million of sales data to industry report.

GGRG has released its first quarter data report on short domain names and it has become a lot more useful. For the first time ever, Escrow.com has contributed sales data to make the report much more meaningful than before.

Escrow.com contributed $16 million of sales data for the quarter. Compare that to ShortNames.com, which reported about $8 million in public sales from the quarter. Essentially, the addition of Escrow.com’s data means there’s 3x the data the report would have otherwise had.

The report has no public LL.com volume from ShortNames but Escrow.com reported $3.1 million in sales of these names in Q1.

Given the high number of private sales that are never disclosed, this data is a very welcome addition to the report and for the domain name industry as a whole.

You can download the report here.

Share
Share
+1
Email

Want to use Escrow.com? Prepare to be verified.

by — Domain Services 96 Comments

New verification process is designed to meet regulations.

Escrow.com has started a new verification process for its customers, both buyers and sellers.

In order to send or receive payments to a personal account, users will have to provide a copy of a government-issued ID (such as a drivers license) and proof of personal address (such as a utility bill).

Businesses will need to provide a copy of a representative’s government issued ID, proof of address of that representative, and company registration documents.

This will no doubt add friction to the process of buying and selling domain names, particularly if the other party is not a frequent domain trader.

But the verification is necessary for Escrow.com to not run afoul of government regulations. Escrow.com GM Jackson Elsegood wrote on NamePros:

To combat the funding of terrorism and money laundering activities, US Federal law requires all financial institutions (including escrow companies) to obtain, verify and record information that identifies each person who opens an account. This requirement is present in many pieces of legislation, but the strongest requirement comes from FinCEN and the US PATRIOT Act, section 326. You can find more information about the US PATRIOT Act and it’s requirements on the US FinCEN site.

Share8
Share9
+11
Email
Shares 18

Escrow.com handles over US$200 million in payments in H1, buys domain name for A$1 million

by — Domain Services 10 Comments

Escrow.com’s parent company recently reported financial results for the first half of 2016 and disclosed a major domain name purchase.

This week I had Escrow.com GM Jackson Elsegood on the Domain Name Wire podcast to provide an update on what his company is doing.

Jackson was careful about talking about the company’s financials because its parent company Freelancer.com is public. But the company recently published its results from the first half of the year, which shed light on how the Escrow.com business (and, by extension, the domain business) is doing.

The company handled gross payments of US $203 million in the first half of the year with transaction volume of 30,372. This generated AUS $4.3 million revenue for Escrow.com and a $0.575 million profit for the segment.

Escrow.com’s revenue was up 18% compared to the same period last year, but its second half is going to have to handle more payments in order to top last year’s annual payment volume of US $430 million.

The company’s H1 2016 presentation also discloses that the company bought a domain name for about AUS $1 million that is unrelated to the business. I can’t find the prospective domain name using DomainIQ’s reverse whois. Any thoughts?

Share10
Share53
+1
Email
Shares 68