IMGCAP(1)]
EBillMe has begun offering a product that enables teens and young adults to purchase goods online without a credit card. The Ottawa, Canada-based company developed the product, dubbed eBillMe Teens, in response to new credit card legislation that may make it more difficult for young adults to get credit cards. Specifically, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act toughens restrictions on college student credit card offerings, including affinity cards banks offer that bear college logos. The key difference between the Teens product and the company's regular billing service is that it is designed to score the credit risk of the payer to which the bill is forwarded, often the parents, instead of the young adult receiving the goods, says Samer Forzley, eBillMe vice president of marketing. After evaluating the credit risk, EBillMe sends the payer a bill for the online purchase he can pay using an online-banking service, Forzley says. The young adult can choose the eBillMe Teens options during the checkout process. "We've made adjustments at the back end on the way we score the risk so young adults are given the option to forward their bill to a parent for payment," he says. In the past, the scoring mechanism would identify transactions with higher risk if the billing and shipping names and addresses did not match, Forzley explains. The company is installing the service to its base of more than 800 online merchants. EBillMe plans to make a marketing push by the time teens are returning to school later this summer, says Forzley.
