Marco Spoerrle: Offerpal Expands to More Non-Traditional and Overseas Payment Options

Offerpal Expands to More Non-Traditional and Overseas Payment Options

April 9th, 2010

By Chris Morrison

Add Comment »

Share

When Offerpal started out a couple years back, it was focused exclusively on online surveys and marketing offers. That’s no longer the case, as last year the company joined the race to become a full-fledged payment platform offering dozens of ways for users to send money to application and game owners.
Its latest raft of additions, announced this week, includes three payment options targeted at children and teens, including those overseas. For the US, Offerpal has partnered with BillMyParents, which lets kids tap into their parent’s credit cards with direct supervision, and Rixty, which uses existing ATMs and convenience stores to let kids pay for online credits in cash. In Asia, Offerpal has added MyCard, which sells gift cards throughout Asia.
Three other new OfferPal partners don’t specifically target kids. For the world market, it has added ClickandBuy, which lets users pay in 120 different currencies, while in Europe Offerpal has added Paysafecard, another pre-paid card. And for the US, the company now has STi prepaid cards.
Over time, the so-called “payment wall” loaded up by Offerpal for users should cater to just about anyone; in fact, it’s hard to imagine that anyone in the US would be terribly hard-pressed to figure out one way or another to pay for a virtual good or service, including the private virtual currency that Offerpal launched last August.
The picture overseas is more fragmented, but Offerpal is at least addressing the major markets of Europe and Asia. As each of the various payment companies fills out its wall of offerings, we’ll begin seeing them battling over finer points in their business models — which is probably why Offerpal also just hired Alex Brutin, who has previous experience with both Google Checkout and PayPal, as a new VP of business development.
Offerpal also just acquired TapJoy in March, which is part of a separate-but-similar move into mobile monetization for the company.

Marco Spoerrle,
MarcoSpoerrle.com