News from the “Seriously?” Department

Posted by lilith on July 31st, 2007 8 Comments

As was reported by the C-VILLE today, the First American Bank of Darden is cutting off MBA student Rafael Diaz-Tushman, who created Pmints, an online fund transferring/payment service. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’ve used something like that before, called, umm, PayPal? The case is contentious because the clientele includes pornography and gambling websites, but hi, welcome to the American economy! All I have to say is this: any person who actually wants to make online payment for anything easier, do it! Your thoughts?

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8 Responses to “News from the “Seriously?” Department”

  1. 31 Jul 2007 at 1:28 pm1Thor said:

    Well, UVA wouldn’t want to be associated with pornographic transactions, now would it?

  2. 31 Jul 2007 at 2:08 pm2downtown, oy said:

    All I have to say is this: any person who actually wants to make online payment for anything easier, do it!

    http://www.paybycash.com

    founded right here in CVille about 10 years ago

    d’oy

  3. 31 Jul 2007 at 3:17 pm3Ethan said:

    Trying to compete with Paypal is like trying to compete with Ebay. It can’t be done. If he had thought of Paymints 8 years ago, he’d have a shot, but it’s just another web 2.0 thing that will ultimately bust.

  4. 31 Jul 2007 at 4:17 pm4TheUpstart said:

    I think Waldo made a good point last week that the business was completely unoriginal…there are plenty of companies that serve as PayPal alternatives.

  5. 31 Jul 2007 at 4:18 pm5downtown, oy said:

    If he had thought of Paymints 8 years ago, he’d have a shot

    Someone else did - here in CVille (10 years ago).

    http://www.paybycash.com

    It’s doing very very well.

    d’oy

  6. 31 Jul 2007 at 4:45 pm6Marshall said:

    See, the thing to remember about Pmints is that PayPal explicitly refuses to do business with pornography or gambling sites. More power to them if their success affords them room for scruples, but it leaves the door open for Pmints to succeed as well (Waldo does make a good point about the existence of other similar services and this not really being an idea innovative enough to warrent the Batten business incubator; I’d be interested to see how Mr. Diaz-Tushman presented it). An alternate argument would be that helping some poor sots blow their money on “addictions” opens a business up to litigation and that Pmints could well eventually be sued into oblivion by the culture of no personal accountability.

    So yeah, the Batten Institute is justified in booting the project on non-ethics grounds, the student is justified in continuing the startup. In other words, this comment is completely useless. Pretend you didn’t read it.

  7. 31 Jul 2007 at 6:04 pm7lilith said:

    $#!%. I swear I’m not copying Waldo. It’s a cool story. Upstart, thank you for bringing the seemingly ditto-copy to my attention.

  8. 31 Jul 2007 at 9:58 pm8Brian Williford said:

    As an internet application developer I am often am forced into using a payment service based on their API’s ability to take calls from some older corporate legacy system. The first payment service to offer a Rails + Ajax + Json + Mootools API will probably instantly grab a huge percent of the web 2.0 development community support. Basically I am saying that these kinds of market changes can somtimes be brought on by codesmiths, not just the consumers, customers or marketing budgets.

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