Mansion Productions Severs Ties to Third-Party Processor SegPay

[gonzo]

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Mansion Productions announced today that it would no longer be working with Cyprus-based Segregated Payments Ltd. (SegPay), the Internet Payment Service Provider (IPSP) that recently entered into an equity partnership with Too Much Media (TMM).


The decision to sever the relationship was made by Mansion very recently.
"We made this decision only two days ago," Mansion Productions CEO Oystein Wright told XBIZ. "This was not planned in any way, but it had to be done and we couldn't wait. We just had to let the situation settle before we could figure out what to do."

Mansion is the owner of the proprietary MPA3 suite of affiliate management software products. Too Much Media, which owns and operates the similar NATS software, is their direct competitor.

When TMM acquired an equity stake in SegPay, creating a new entity called TMMSegPay, the writing was on the wall as far as MPA3 continuing to work with the IPSP.

"It's very simple," Oystein said. "The reason we cannot work with SegPay is because the owners are TMM."

Oystein stressed that the decision was not personal, but purely business.
"The way we technically integrate MPA3 to communicate with the processors is different from how NATS works, and frankly, superior. Why would we want to give it away? No, we simply could not allow our competitor to know that information."

As it currently stands, however, Oystein believes that some of Mansion's technology could already be compromised.

"As is it, TMM will get access to the information we have sent to SegPay in the past. That’s information they just shouldn’t have. I don’t like it, and that's why we had to cut it off right away. We could not wait four months and during that time put our clients at risk. It had to be now."

Oystein added that Mansion has informed all of its clients about the decision, and has sent out a letter of termination to SegPay.
"We don't tell our clients what processors they can use, but in this case we have to say no to SegPay. I’m probably going to get some complaints about it, and some people may want to stop using MPA3, and that's their decision, but we feel we've made the only decision we could for our clients and ourselves."

[KevinG]

I would probably do the same thing if I was Oystein.

[gonzo]

lets don't forget mansion opened the door for nats by advertising a shave feature.
how anyone trusts them after that I don't know.

[KevinG]

Originally Posted by gonzo

lets don't forget mansion opened the door for nats by advertising a shave feature.
how anyone trusts them after that I don't know.

Wow. I had no idea about that. That's messed up.

I guess they cut themselves while shaving. lol.

[Forest]

does anyone else find it a conflict that TMM now owns an affiliate software program a processing company AND several affiliate programs

Too Much info in one hands. Would YOU process thru a company that owns a competing affiliate program? Would you feel that your surfers reg info would be safe and secure?

[RawAlex]

In the end, I think the worst part for TMM at this point is that they have moved themselves into a position of directly competiting with the companies they need to make their product valuable. Multiple billing options / layered processing doesn't work if you are only supported by one processor. NATS needs to have all of the processors possible on board and providing support to the NATS way of doing things, otherwise they quickly become Segpay's affiliate system only.

Mansions move to cut ties with Segpay is just the first in what I think may be a series of companies picking sides in a fight that is just a negative for the paysite owners.

The net winner in all of this may end up being CCbill and their "new" affiliate system.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Forest

does anyone else find it a conflict that TMM now owns an affiliate software program a processing company AND several affiliate programs...

My thoughts exactly. If I were a user of NATS I'd be very uneasy about that.

[Jace]

the shave feature in mpa was a HORRIBLE mistake, I agree, but I also think that Mansion has done a superb job in the past few years rectifying that mistake and taking steps to gain trust back

but this segpay / too much media shit is kind of weird for sure and I am not quite sure that I fully agree with the step TMM took

[Hell Puppy]

IMO...

Your host, your software provider and your processor should all basically be like Switzerland. Lines are beginning to blur.

It ultimately comes down to how ethically each is run. Take your host for instance. They may not own an affiliate program. But they have root access to all of your data. Wonder what a monthly dump of email addresses of people who have joined paysites across multiple programs' servers would be worth if discreetly marketed.

You count on their ethics not to use it.

Now I'm not sure what kind of proprietary technology mansion could possibly be doing with postbacks, but if that is the REAL concern here, then why not switch SEGpay to use a non-proprietary method instead of cutting it off completely?

Shit flying everywhere with the software right now, I can see it's gonna be a busy Vegas trip for me. I'll make no decisions and not a lot of comments until after getting out there and talking to some folks face to face.