Digital Money World

20 Questions With e-gold Merchant, Amr Halawany, CEO, XtraOrbit Co. IT Solutions

by Mark on January 29th, 2007

Q1. How long has your company been online?
XtraOrbit has been online since July 2002, so it’s almost our Fifth year online.

Q2. Please tell us more about your online business?
We are an IT solutions provider based in Alexandria, Egypt Providing web hosting, domain registration, and web development services to small and medium businesses. Also I would like to mention, that our hosting infrastructure depends on a State of the art carrier class data center facility located in Houston, Texas, as well as another one located in Cairo, Egypt.

Q3. What digital currency do you accept?
Mainly, e-gold and Moneybookers along with the traditional Visa/Master cards, but soon we’ll start accepting other digital currencies as Liberty Reserve, e-Bullion and 1MDC.

Q4. How long have you accepted e-gold?
We started accepting e-gold since 2003 when we were first introduced to e-gold by a friend and I would like to say that it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

Q5. Why do you accept e-gold?
At first, we were looking for an alternative solution for accepting payments, especially for 3rd world countries where credit card market penetration is very low compared to the United States and other European countries. But now and after several years of accepting e-gold, we’re sure that e-gold has the potential to be a dominant player in the e-market, and we would like to be there when the time comes.

Q6. What hosting customers do you feel you are targeting by accepting e-gold?
There’s a myth out there, that e-gold is only used by certain customers or communities, but from my own experience, this is not true, as we have customers who prefer to pay with e-gold from almost every spot in the world. We’ve even plotted our customers’ locations on a daily updated map, check it yourself at: XtraOrbit.com

Q7. Do you accept casino hosting, investments or adult webs using e-gold?
No, we don’t accept HYIPs, Gambling or Adult (legal/illegal) sites to be hosted or operated on our network. I’m proud to say that we were the first hosting company to enforce such policy, we even went as far as putting signs on every page of our website asking customers not to sign if their websites are related to these sites.

Q8. Who is your mainstream e-gold customer ?
Since our hosting packages suits almost everyone, I believe that anyone paying with e-gold is a potential customer, from the average Joe to Mr. Business Man.

Q9. What benefits do you see that e-gold & digital gold currency bring to your business?
Simply Peace of mind, with their lowest transaction rates in the market, the “no chargeback” guarantee and their top notch security measures. Not to mention that every penny in the e-gold system is backed by real gold, which even adds more protection against fiat inflation.

Q10. Would you recommend e-gold to other hosting and IT solutions companies? Why?
Sure, I highly recommend e-gold to any service provider, not just hosting or IT solution providers, especially those providing real-time services as domain registration or download able software, as I’m sure they’ll be pleased with the “no chargeback guarantee” along with the benefits mentioned before. Also, with a few lines of code they’ll be able to integrate e-gold into any payment system in a matter of minutes, thanks to the e-gold shopping cart interface (SCI).

Q11. What changes have you noticed over the past 3 years in the use of digital gold currency/e-gold?
I believe that e-gold –at some stage- was mainly used to store funds but it’s not the case anymore. Many online shops have started to accept e-gold through the past years, thus encouraging users to spend their ‘stored’ e-gold in exchange for goods and services. While the HYIP/Gambling market still holds the lion share in daily transactions. I hope that soon enough, and with the expanding user base this will be changed.

Q12. Do you see a profit difference between credit card income and digital currency income? (we understand that digital currency may have lower fees)
Of course, e-gold for example offers the lowest rates in the market, also their “no chargeback” guarantee keeps you assured that you’ll never get charged for fraudulent transactions as it’s the case with credit cards.

Q13. Since there are no ‘chargebacks’ with e-gold may I ask if you have experienced any with your credit card income ?
Credit card chargebacks have always been a major threat for our online business, costing us thousands of dollars every year, no matter how hard we tried or how good our fraud screening or due diligence checks were.

Q14. Have your digital currency account ever been hacked, frozen or limited?
Thanks to e-gold Secure Randomized Keyboard ‘SRK’, AccSent and other security measures our account has never been hacked, frozen or limited.

Q15. Have you incorporated or built in e-gold into any of your clients’ shopping carts or webs?
I’m glad to say that we’ve integrated e-gold in many online stores on behalf of our clients.

Q16. Do many of your clients accept digital currency such as e-gold?
Around 40% of our clients accept e-gold as their preferred method of payment.

Q17. Do you recommend e-gold to your clients?
In every possible occasion, and as far as offering special discounts to those paying with e-gold.

Q18. The growth of the Internet has been tremendous in the past several years and your business has thrived, what do you see as the future of e-gold and digital gold currency?
I would say that e-gold -as well as other digital gold currencies- have the chance to become a role player in the near future. But to be honest, they have to put more efforts in advertising and promoting their concept.

Q19. What webs would you recommend to new users where they can learn more about digital gold currency?
The digital gold currency community is a rich one, users from all over \the world contribute on daily basis to share their knowledge.

I highly recommend the following sites to new users :

http://www.gold-pages.net
http://www.goldfaqs.com
http://www.dgcwiki.com
http://www.the-gold-blog.com/

*I would like to thank Mr. Halawany for providing me with the interview.

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POSTED IN: Boosting Online Sales, Digital Gold Currency, Interviews, Online Sales, e-gold