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Escrow.com’s 2018 Masters of Domains

by — Domain Sales 4 Comments

Escrow.com honors some of its top customers in 2018.

For the second year in a row, Escrow.com honored ten “Masters of Domains” before the NamesCon auction in Las Vegas. The list includes the top ten highest grossing individual brokers for the prior year.

Last year’s winner, George Hong, pulled his name out of the running this year because he doesn’t want to be viewed as an individual broker because he has a team at GUTA.com.

Here’s this year’s list:

1. Raymond Liu, 62.com
2. Andrew Rosener, Media Options
3. Mohammed Hashim Al-Asadi, TopNames
4. Joe Uddeme, Name Experts
5. Ali Zandinejad, Starfire Web Holdings
6. Özcan Marcus Kocak, DotWhat
7. Jen Sale, Evergreen
8. James Booth, BGDN
9. Nat Cohen, Telepathy
10. Ryan McKegney, DomainAgents

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Online escrow companies add new features

by — Services 4 Comments

Escrow.com and Payoneer Escrow announce new features.

Two online escrow companies popular among domain name investors have added new features.

Escrow.com released a new plugin for WooCommerce. It allows the two million WooCommerce users to add Escrow.com payments as a payment option.

The company plans to build additional plugins for online store platforms.

Payoneer Escrow has also added new features.

Payoneer Buy-It-Now buttons are now available. Domain owners can create a button and insert it on a landing page, allowing a visitor to start a transaction to buy the domain name at a fixed price.

The company also introduced domain holding transactions that let buyers pay for a domain name over time.

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Escrow.com releases beta API for escrow integration

by — Services 2 Comments

API makes it easy for third-parties to integrate escrow services.

Escrow.com has released a new API in beta.

According to the company, the API will make it easy for websites, marketplaces, classifieds sites, shopping carts, and mobile apps to integrate Escrow.com’s services. The company says it’s as easy as integrating payment methods such as Stripe and PayPal.

Escrow.com already has integrations with many marketplaces, but I believe these were custom integrations. Now there’s a centralized API that any service can use.

Details of the beta API, including documenation, are here.

Escrow.com has long been the dominant escrow service for domain name transactions. It handled over $200 million in payments in the first half of this year. Freelancer.com acquired the company for $7.5 million in 2015.

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Escrow.com drops minimum fee to $10

by — Services 13 Comments

Small transactions are now cheaper at Escrow.com.

Escrow.com is dropping its minimum fee on transactions to $10.

This will lower the price customers pay for the standard service for any transaction under $775. It will lower the price for transactions using a credit card under $400.

Escrow.com GM told Domain Name Wire that this move was made to compete with PayPal. “This will give people escrow protection without the need to pay $25 on a $300 domain,” he said. “$10 makes it a no-brainer.”

Payoneer, a competing escrow service, also has a $10 minimum.

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

by — 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.

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