Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,
Today morning I received an email from Brandon Abbey, the President of Escrow.com revealed an exciting news which I wanted to share with you.
SYDNEY, April 27, 2015: Freelancer.com, the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace1 , today announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Escrow.com from a private investor for US$7.5 million in cash, and completed a AUD$10 million placement of ordinary shares to institutional investors.
Headquartered in California, Escrow.com provides online escrow services that facilitate and accelerate e-commerce by assuring secure settlement. It was founded in 1999 by Fidelity National Financial, a Fortune 500 company and the US’s largest provider of commercial and residential mortgage and diversified services.
Escrow.com is the leading provider of secure online payments and online transaction management for consumers and businesses on the Internet, with FY14 gross payment volume of US$265 million, net revenue of US$5 million, US$1.2 million in EBITDA and over US$2.2 billion in transactions to date.
Escrow.com reduces the risk of fraud by acting as a trusted third party that collects, holds and disburses funds according to buyer and seller instructions. Escrow services provided by the company are licensed and regulated.
Escrow.com partners include eBay, GoDaddy, AutoTrader.com, Flippa.com and it is also a strategic partner of the U.S. Commercial Service (USCS) in support of President Obama’s National Export Initiative designed to significantly grow US export volume.
Freelancer.com Chief Executive Matt Barrie said, “We are pleased to acquire Escrow.com, the world’s largest online escrow company. This highly complementary acquisition will enhance the ability of our 15 million users to transact securely, and there are large opportunities for growth and synergies with core offerings. Finally, it is a strong cornerstone for entering the payments space”.
Escrow.com President & Managing Director Brandon Abbey said, “We are excited to be joining the Freelancer.com group. Freelancer’s expertise in marketplaces, combined with our expertise in secure online payments are an excellent strategic fit.”.
The Escrow.com group staff will be continuing with the California-based business.
A capital raising of AUD$10 million of ordinary shares to institutional investors was oversubscribed and has been completed to fund the acquisition, and for general corporate purposes. 10 million ordinary shares were issued at $1.00, a premium to the last close of $0.995. UBS AG, Australia Branch, was sole bookrunner for the deal. The acquisition of Escrow.com is subject to regulatory approval.
Settlement of the placement is currently scheduled to take place on Thursday, 30 April 2015, with allotment and quotation of shares expected to occur on the ASX on Friday, 1 May 2015. Escrow.com was advised in the transaction by Capstone Partners LLC.
About Freelancer®
Quadruple Webby award-winning Freelancer.com is the world’s largest freelancing, crowdsourcing and local services marketplace by total number of users and projects posted. Over 15 million registered users have posted 7.5 million projects and contests to date in over 850 areas as diverse as website development, logo design, marketing, copywriting, astrophysics, aerospace engineering and manufacturing. Freelancer Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker ASX:FLN.
With this change, I hope they upgrade their domain name escrow service so that the “Sedo-type Premium Service” is available for domain sellers. I got paid by Sedo.com on the same day as I transferred a domain to their escrow account. Yes on the same day literally. Yes, their escrow service fee is 3%, but their escrow service fully deserves the 3% fee.
I am not sure if U.S based sellers receive the payment on same day but I live in Pakistan and normally it takes 1-2 business days to receive funds in my bank. I think I cannot receive wire more quickly.
Where are you actually based in?
I mean they asked the bank to make payment on the same day. Bank wiring time is a different story and not under their control.
The point is that the seller does not have to wait for the buyer’s action to get the sale money.
Not sure if I got your point or not but Escrow.com takes almost a day to review the entire transaction before releasing the funds.
Even though the buyer doesn’t approve the domain is received, you have the choice to ask Escrow.com to verify the domain change by checking the WHOIS and you may supply the registrant change email you received from the registrar and they will make sure to move out things much quicker for you. I have done this on several occasions.
“you may supply the registrant change email you received from the registrar” – I don’t know about other registrars, but Godaddy email simply says the domain is deleted from the account, nothing about the buyer. It cannot serve as proof of registrant change to the buyer. “you have the choice to ask Escrow.com to verify the domain change by checking the WHOIS” – What if the ‘buyer’ quickly changes WHOIS info (There are many ways to do that. One of them may be push domain to somebody else’s account immediately) before Escrow.com tries to verify the domain change at your… Read more »
Oh crap. Oh well. Will look elsewhere for escrow services from now on.
May I know the reason why you will look for another escrow service? I personally don’t think there will be any changes as far as customers relationship is concerned with Escrow.com
Also as mentioned in the press release, “The Escrow.com group staff will be continuing with the California-based business.” I see only betterment in future.
Sure, I’ll tell.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/freemarket-is-spamming-flippas-failures.852780/
I dont wish to do business with spammers. People mention things in press releases all the time – only time will tell if they deviate from the press release. I dont think I am going to stick around to find out.
Thanks for sharing that Jill as I wasn’t aware of it 🙂
I still fully trust and support Escrow.com and I hope they will only get better in future. In any case, I will keep you guys updated with how things are moving and changing at Escrow.com while doing transactions through them.
Thank you. You are correct, only time will tell.
I fully understand Jill. I’m a customer of Freelancer.com for many years (Buyer). All I can say that there’s A LOT of space for improvements.
@ Domain Observer GoDaddy always send you an email which says “Domain Account Change – registrant change This email is to confirm the recent change of registrant of the following domain name(s): domainname.com” I simply send that email to Escrow.com for confirmation of transfer process initiated by me and rest is up to them to verify everything. Now that’s an interesting question but what I have observed so far doing all many transactions is that when you initiate the push/transfer, and let’s say the buyer changes the WHOIS or hides the real identity, I think Escrow.com has top level connections… Read more »
Thanks for your explanation.
Yes, Godaddy sends the email mentioned in your comment. But, that email does not show who the new registrant is. So, the email itself cannot serve as proof that the domain has been transferred to the buyer.
It of course says “the available information has been recorded in our system.” That may be the only relief, but will require a lot of painstaking efforts on the part of the seller to get things on the right track once the buyer is unfortunately an ill-willed person.
Hi
I still dont understand why escrow does not use paypal to send funds to international sellers,only US sellers can receive the proceeds rom their sales.
Yes, this is where Escrow must focus and starts making payment to international sellers through PayPal. They can charge fee for that but having this option would be great. Not much beneficial for me because PayPal doesn’t operate in our country but still it would be handy since I use my friend’s PayPal and good for others too.
Hope they will consider and implement soon…
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