Payment Central Inc.

Welcome To Payment Central Inc.

Regardless of whether you're involved with a business, fundraising organization or government agency, if people need or want to send your money, it can only be a "good thing" if you make it easier, safer and faster for them to do so.

That's where the Payment Central Inc. "Secure Telephone Transfer" ("STT") system comes in! By calling a toll-free number to reach our secure payment/donation acceptance service, your clients or donors can easily arrange to transfer funds to your account, whether they choose to do from their credit or checking accounts, OVER THE TELEPHONE. No mailing or wiring funds, no revealing their information to live operators after long waits listening to low fidelity music or incessantly-repeating commercials - just a short, intuitively-simple session with our automated phone server (which, as is explained to callers, is not ever connected to the Internet, so that there is absolutely no way for hackers to gain information to their personal information) and the transfer is done! This new STT service is the easiest, fastest and MOST SECURE method of transferring funds remotely which your clients or donors will ever have experienced!

WHEN WILL IT ACTUALLY BE SAFE TO PASS FINANCIAL INFORMATION ONLINE?

For several years now, financial institutions and others have been promising that there would "soon" be an absolutely secure method of passing personal - especially financial - information online. Some of the offerings, S.E.T. ("Secure Electronic Transactions") the most prominent among them, have come and gone (abandoned by their advocates when it became clear that they were simply not getting the job done), and the sad fact remains that there is STILL no method which can assure users that they can safely make payments online without exposing their personal information to hackers and/or criminals - either at the moment that the information is transferred, or while it is being stored at the receiving website. There is even a very nasty Java application (described elsewhere on this website) can even grab the data ("in the clear") as it is being entered in the client server (into a form which will subsequently be encrypted and sent off supposedly ever so securely), e-mail the unencrypted data to a hacker or criminal - and the client will not even be aware that this has happened, until unexpected charges start to appear on his or her bank statements.

Even worse than the practical aspects of the true insecurity of data exposed online is the PERCEPTION of insecurity of that data. When online users are reading every day about websites hacked into, personal identities being stolen, and large groups of credit card numbers being grabbed - and even used or sold, in some cases! Can the users be blamed for fearing for the safety of *their* finances. It certainly is not by accident that a recent, major study conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.) has found that fully *91%* of all online users are somewhat or totally uncomfortable with the idea of passing their own financial information online - nor that other studies have found that only about 15% of all online users have made even one purchase online.

So, the true answer to the question posed above, "when will it actually be safe to pass financial information online?", and to the related question, "when will online users be fully willing to make payments or donations online?", would certainly seem to be ...

"WHEN PIGS CAN FLY!!"

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Smart marketers and fundraisers will therefore realize that, while it would really be wonderful if they could accommodate all the people who want to send them money with a so-called "secure payment" form on a website ("https" has such a nice "techie" sound to it, doesn't it?), it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to offer more than one method to move the funds! Obviously, the alternative methods must be offline (to avoid the same taint of insecurity), so what are these methods - and their advantages and disadvantages?

ADVANTAGE(S) DISADVANTAGE(S)

mailing in a check: no exposure online, slow, several steps to fairly low-cost carry out - prepare check & envelope, (buy and) affix stamp, bring envelope to mailbox

wiring funds through guaranteed, easy very expensive, delivery a bank to arrange can take several days

phoning a live quick (during expensive (especially for operator and business hours, or calls arriving during providing credit up to 24/7) non-business hours), card or checking requires much employee account information time and:

the automated phone quick, low-cost, No one has discovered any service offered by absolutely secure; disadvantages yet - the Payment Central available 24/7 at worst that can be said Inc. no extra cost about this service is that it requires one extra step for an online user - a call to a toll-free number after filling out the order or donation form online; on the other hand, that extra step is what absolutely protects the payor's financial data!

And the most important reason to offer alternative methods for people to send money to you is that offering payment online is a woefully inadequate method - if only 15% of online users are willing actually to BUY - and pay - online, that means that perfect penetration of this marketplace will only afford you access to roughly 7 or 8% of the overall population! Could that EVER make sense as a marketing proposition?

Depending on the type of payment or donation acceptance which would best suit your needs, and whether you are situated in the U.S., Canada or overseas, please click on the appropriate button on the left menu to access more specific information.

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