A tale of three reports:
PRNewswire:
Wednesday May 8, 8:02 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: VeriSign, Inc.
eBay and VeriSign Announce New Marketing and Services Alliance
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif and SAN JOSE, Calif., May 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY - news), the world's online marketplace(TM), and VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN - news), the leading provider of digital trust services, today announced a new multi-year services and marketing alliance. Under terms of the agreement, eBay will deploy VeriSign authentication services, establish an eBay marketplace for highly sought-after domain names and enter into a multi-platform marketing and promotional campaign.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"Our new relationship with VeriSign continues our tradition of providing eBay users with the latest tools designed to shop in a safe, friendly and trusted environment," said Jeff Jordan, eBay's vice president of U.S. operations. "Our agreement will also develop an alternative marketplace for businesses looking to obtain domain name registrations to start or expand their Web presence with a domain name that fits their objectives."
eBay, which facilitated more than $11 billion in gross merchandise sales last year via its online marketplace, will use VeriSign's Authentication Service Bureau (ASB) to authenticate new eBay sellers during the registration process on its site. The VeriSign ASB is a managed service that utilizes VeriSign's proven digital trust services infrastructure to reliably identify parties in online transactions or communications.
"As both the volume and value of goods sold over the Internet continues to grow, it becomes even more critical for users to feel a sense of trust in their online transactions," said Anil Pereira, executive vice president and general manager of VeriSign's enterprise and service provider division. "Validating the identity of sellers on eBay provides added comfort for site members and lays the foundation for both higher value transactions as well as new service offerings to proliferate."
One of the first marketing and promotional initiatives to be launched under the new alliance is aimed at eBay's community of 46 million registered users. It will be designed to reach eBay's extensive customer base to promote the sale of registration rights of domain names on eBay and establish the eBay marketplace as a new alternative for obtaining domain name registrations in the fast growing domain names spaces.
The domain name marketplace is beginning with .bz domain names, which are available on a joint eBay and VeriSign Web site at members.ebay.com .
Reuters:
Wednesday May 8, 6:43 am Eastern Time
Reuters Internet Report
VeriSign to Auction '.bz' Names on eBay
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Security and Web address provider VeriSign Inc., which has seen layoffs and missed its sales target partly as a result of lower-than-expected Web address sales, on Wednesday announced it will auction domain names on eBay Inc.
The auctions of ".bz" domain names will be targeted at businesses, VeriSign said in a statement. Other domain names are likely to follow, a spokesman said.
With 46 million users, eBay offers a ready market for everything from vintage baseball cards and diet pills to airline tickets and used computers.
The ".bz" domain is the top-level domain for the Central American country of Belize and is different from the ".biz" domain, which is one of the new generic top-level domains that will be entering the ".com" dominated market.
VeriSign is overseeing the registry for the ".bz" domain.
Separately on Tuesday, VeriSign Chairman and Chief Executive Stratton Sclavos, speaking at the J.P.Morgan H&Q technology conference in San Francisco, could not tell analysts when he thought sales of domain names might pick up.
Those sales dropped off last year after the dot-com bubble speculative bubble burst in 1999 and 2000. Until then, buyers gobbled up Web addresses in a frenzied attempt to stake a claim in the Internet.
Also under the eBay partnership, VeriSign will provide services to verify the identification of sellers on eBay to help cut down on fraud.
Currently, sellers provide credit card information to register on eBay and customers can rate the sellers following transactions.
"We're always finding people who have been suspended in the past and who are trying to re-register," said Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman. "Or they're providing inaccurate information and are coming to the site to engage in nefarious activity."
VeriSign will handle the registration process and validate the identity of sellers by confirming phone numbers and addresses, said Anil Pereira, executive vice president and general manager of VeriSign's enterprise and service provider division.
For higher ticket items, VeriSign will also verify credit and other information on potential sellers as part of its Authentication Service Bureau, he said.
Dow Jones:
Wednesday May 8, 9:34 am Eastern Time
eBay,VeriSign Confirm Marketing, Services Alliance
MOUNTAIN VIEW , Calif. -(Dow Jones)- VeriSign Inc. (NasdaqNM: VRSN - news) (VRSN) confirmed a multi- year agreement with eBay Inc. (NasdaqNM: EBAY - news) (EBAY) to perform background checks on eBay sellers as a way to fight fraud on the Internet auction site.
Financial terms weren't disclosed.
An article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal said Verisign will validate the addresses and phone numbers of new sellers who register at eBay - a process designed to weed out those who provide phony contact information.
In a press release Wednesday, VeriSign said the agreement also commits the companies to jointly establish a marketplace on eBay for Internet domain names ending with .bz.
According to the Journal, fraud is a persistent problem at eBay, although company executives have said fraud affects only a tiny precentage of the site's transactions.
Shares of VeriSign closed Tuesday at $8.88, up 46 cents, or 5.5%, on the Nasdaq market. Shares of eBay closed at $49.83, down 70 cents, or 1.4%. |
