Noca – An Alternative To PayPal?
By Anna Johnson on February 12th, 2009A group of ex-Visa employees have launched Noca, an online payments service that TechCrunch believes may well be an alternative to PayPal.
Noca originally facilitated micro-payments via two Facebook applications, OneClickPay and HelpYourWorld, but now offers payment services for unlimited amounts.
Its key advantage over PayPal and other online payment services such as Google Checkout is that Noca does not impose the high transactional fees (usually 2-3 percent plus $0.30) placed on consumer purchases by credit card companies.
Noca’s online payment service charges 0.25 percent on transactions and does away with the fixed $0.30 fee. This is essentially because Noca is based on the use of debit rather than credit cards. In a typical transaction, money will move from a customer’s checking/savings account to the merchant’s account, usually within 1-2 business days. The customer’s issuing bank underwrites the risk.
In an economic environment where many people are reducing their spending and credit card usage, Noca – as a debit based system – may well take off.
Source: Leena Rao, “Is Noca The Next PayPal?” TechCrunch, February 9, 2009
