AFAIK many online merchants don’t process payments with their own code and systems but rather rely on professional payment processor companies. To me this sounds like an environment that should be prone to the rapid spread of new payment systems since, after all, how hard should it be for a big processor to implement handling yet another transaction API.
Except, in practice this does not seem to be happening. E.g. I don’t see many online merchants having a payment processor that would take eGold, WebMoney, AliPay or various other imaginable online currencies.
So how come? Is adding support for yet another payment system not that easy for the processor company?
I actually work in a similar industry (less online merchants and more physical retailers, banks, etc). We do exactly what you are saying from time to time: add another network or funding company that the retailer or acquirer will connect to for transaction authorization.
It isn’t a completely trivial exercise. They have their own API that needs to be coded to. In my experience the smaller companies we connect to tend to have very flaky documentation (not to mention flaky APIs that make me wonder about their dedication to transaction integrity), so coding these interfaces takes a lot of time and trial and error. There also needs to be a robust certification period. This is all very doable, but its still a project that costs money so at the end of the day it needs to add real value. Are the entities going to agree on the cost and fees for transaction processing? Is the retailer really going to lose business if they don’t support this payment mechanism? I suspect for most of these smaller third party payment forms it isn’t really worth their while, even for a big processor who could code it once and use it for multiple customers. I honestly hadn’t even heard of your three examples, and now that I look them up I see they’re from three different countries. I bet that adds additional complications too. Does “eGold” even have an API for this? Their website is about as fly-by-night as I can imagine …