Apologies for being late to this party. Just getting back from an 18 day, 5 country trip and managed to get on an international flight without a working WiFi. It happened to be on a day when we created some excitement.
For calibration, $8.10 is the hard cost from Verisign and ICANN for a .COM. The most recent PayPal rate increase is insane. Here is what happens with PayPal on your $8.10 domain purchase.
Total amount: $8.10 USD
Fee amount: -$0.53 USD
Net amount: $7.57 USD
That is a whopping 6.6%. Insane. Credit card processors are a little better but they are opportunists do.
When you are dealing in hundreds of domains, that is chump change. When you are dealing in hundreds of thousands of domains, it adds up.
Also, registrars keep funds on deposit with Verisign -- in other words we pre-pay Verisign. When customers pay us via PayPal or Credit card, we get those funds 2-3 days later as usable funds. Charity is one thing, but that is an upside-down economic model as it scales. And it is scaling as registrants move on from their legacy registrars in search of a reliable partner to hold their domain assets, process escrow and process domain sales/leases.
So all that being said, to get the $8.10 deal, here are the options:
- Wire funds into your Epik account
- Make a counter deposit at any Chase or Wells Fargo branch
- Pay via Bitcoin
- Sell or lease your domains via Epik -- your proceeds are deposited commission free, and tax-free, and are instantly available funds for domain purchases, etc
In other words, the $8.10 deal is completely on the table. It just requires our large volume clients to not have Epik hold the drippy bag from PayPal. Those guys are simply crooks. It is not just the transaction fees. They are also now charging insane fees for sending funds, e.g. a customer yesterday receiving a $2500 escrow proceeds getting charged another $51.25 in PayPal fees for a disbursement. It is nuts. The domain industry needs to do its part to put these jerks out of business.
So, bottomline, if anyone wants the $8.10 deal, just contact your account rep or support, and they will update your account to the $8.10 cost deal subject to the above funding methods.
At the end of the day, Epik is still the best deal around. With all-inclusive $8.10 .COM and a fantastic bundle of value-added services included at no additional cost. However, we do need our clients to cooperate and put these PayPal opportunists out of business. Enough is enough. #StopUsingPaypal
