CreditCards.com has fetched the fifth-highest price for a Web domain name.
The address has been sold to a Texas marketing company called ClickSuccess LP for $2.75 million — probably the largest sum spent to establish a hub for online card applications.
ClickSuccess, which made the deal in March but announced it Tuesday, is already operating the site.
“We feel like we bought a piece of Park Avenue, and now is the time to develop it and realize its full potential,” said Dan Smith, the Austin company’s president and chief executive, in an interview. “It is an easy-to-remember address, and the name is obviously clear and indicative of what it is.”
He said he believes ClickSuccess can do a better job of drawing traffic than CreditCards.com’s former owner, Deal Jam LLC, a Boston marketing company that also runs relationship.com, carbs.com, and the relationship-advice site lovetactics.com.
“It was an underdeveloped site,” Mr. Smith said. “We felt they weren’t using it to its full advantage.”
ClickSuccess says it specializes in marketing financial products, but according to its Web site it has stopped providing consulting or marketing services so it can devote itself to CreditCards.com.
Mr. Smith said his company did not buy the content of Deal Jam’s Web site, only the name. ClickSuccess, he said, developed its own “consumer-friendly” site with several participating major issuers. The site markets cards by such categories as instant approval, low interest, prepaid, student, and “credit cards for bad credit.”
Participating issuers include Advanta Corp., American Express Co., Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley’s Discover Financial Services Inc., First Premier Bank of Sioux Falls, S.D., and HSBC Holdings PLC’s Household International. Mr. Smith said he began talks with issuers in advance of the acquisition.
Visitors clicking on an offer go directly to the issuer’s Web site. ClickSuccess, which says it does not keep personal information on applicants, receives a commission on each accepted application.
Mr. Smith would not say how many applications have been submitted but said he was “happy” with the traffic it is generating and that he expects applications to continue to rise.
According to Javelin Strategy and Research of Pleasanton, Calif., about 8% of the financial heads of households in the United States applied for a credit card online in the past 30 days — roughly the same percentage as last year.
Online card hubs have had an uneven history. Creditland.com went out of business in 2000 after running through $34 million of venture capital. Its backers included Bank of America Corp., First Union Capital Partners, and Charles Schwab & Co. Last year IAC InteractiveCorp. of New York bought the consumer finance site GetSmart.com from Providian Financial Corp. and folded it into LendingTree.com.
Mr. Smith said CreditCards.com has good potential.
“The average consumer has three to five credit cards and $6,000 to $7,000 in credit card debt,” he said. “It is a big part of everyday life … and is becoming bigger and bigger every day.”
