There is a matter we would like to clear up before we go any further with our current plans. It’s concerning the past and future of the VirtaPay API.

API History up to Today

Several months ago, before creating the master plan, we were developing the VirtaPay API. As part of the API system, we had hoped to allow VirtaPay Premium members to earn commissions from the API.

After monitoring the API as it ran for several months, we realized that the demand for the API was much less than we had originally anticipated.

We now believe that if we had continued to put time and resources into further development of the API, it would have been a loss for VirtaPay users. VirtaPay just wasn’t big enough yet. There were not enough users and not enough built-in value.

Today, the API is usable, but, it’s not getting used by many developers yet. We don’t currently charge developers for API access and we don’t have plans to at this time. This could change.

API Future

The time for developing the API further will come. We realize that the API could be more useful. More features could be added, including instant payment notifications and much more. But, we will not continue development of the API until we have increased our active user base, and thus, demand for the API.

To recap, for now, we feel that our Premium members—and all VirtaPay users—will receive a far greater benefit if we focus on the new master plan rather than spend time developing the API. The API can come later.

The Master Plan

Our current top priority is now to complete all phases of the master plan as outlined in our previous post. Our Premium members are already working on the first phase, actively promoting the growth of our active user base. In return, they are rewarded with sign-up bonuses to their VirtaPay account balances and long-term revenue directly to their bank accounts from our Ad Sharing program.

If you haven’t activated Ad Sharing / Premium membership, you may want to look at it again. We have removed the time limits and will leave the program open to join until we reach our growth target for Premium members. At that time, only Premium members will be invited to participate in beta testing the debit card system when it is developed and ready to be tested.

Even if you don’t activate Ad Sharing, you can still earn sign-up bonuses to your VirtaPay account by sharing your personal referral link. Your referral link is found at the bottom of your “My Account” page when you log in.

First, congratulations to those who activated Ad Sharing / Premium membership after our last blog post. Reading today’s post will explain more about the important role your decision will soon play in the VirtaPay master plan.

A Preview of the Master Plan

The VirtaPay master plan has one primary goal: To bring the VirtaPay currency into worldwide acceptance as a universal payment method. The plan consists of several phases which are designed to work together in order to make this goal a reality.

Here is a preview of how the master plan is designed to work…

1) Growth of our Active User Base

You, our current EarlyBird users who have been testing the VirtaPay system, are invited to participate in the Ad Sharing / Premium membership program. Those who participate will be rewarded with the potential for lifetime ad revenue from everyone you refer. In addition, your Ad Sharing Network has the potential to continue growing on its own with our Cascading Referral System. See the Ad Sharing page for more details. As you share VirtaPay, it will help us reach our growth targets for our active user base.

2) Independent Currency Agents

We will introduce a new role: Independent Currency Agents. Those who choose to join this program will get to participate in currency exchange and merchant relations. There are a lot of exciting benefits for those who choose to participate in this role, but positions will be limited. These agents play a critical role in the master plan. We’ll share more details on this role in future posts.

3) Merchant Program

We will open the doors to thousands of merchants to begin accepting VirtaPay payments. The merchants will have an easy way to accept payments worldwide anywhere they have an Internet connection. Merchants can be either local or Internet based. They may sell physical or digital products or services.

We expect these new merchants will give you thousands of new ways to spend your VirtaPay balance. In addition, this influx of new merchants could greatly increase the value of VP$ for exchange rates to other world currencies.

4) Debit Card Program

Toward the end of the master plan, we will begin beta testing our planned debit card program. In order for this testing to begin, we must reach our growth targets in all other phases of the master plan. We will outline what exactly these growth targets are in coming posts.

Only Premium members (those who activate Ad Sharing) will get to participate in beta testing of the debit card system. Here are a couple of the reasons behind this decision…

• Rewarding Contributors - Ad Sharing / Premium members are actively contributing to the growth of our active user base. We want to reward them for their efforts.
• Identity Verification – We have not yet implemented an identity verification system. Some people create multiple fake accounts. By only allowing Premium members to participate in the debit card beta test, we eliminate those who are abusing our service.

More Details Soon

We’ll post more details about the VirtaPay master plan in upcoming posts. If you would like to be sure that you get to participate in our beta test of the debit card system, be sure to activate Ad Sharing / Premium membership.

If you have already activated, be sure to share your personal referral link. You could start your Ad Sharing Network growing with very little effort and it could pay you back for life.

In recent posts we have mentioned the VirtaPay master plan. This plan is designed to bring the VirtaPay currency into worldwide acceptance as a universal payment method.

There’s still time…

In a matter of days, we plan to share an overview of the master plan with VirtaPay users. We can’t reveal much at this time, but we can say this… if you haven’t already activated Ad Sharing (Premium membership) you may want to have a look and activate it while you can.

Ad Sharing is an exciting program as it is (some of our users who activated Ad Sharing months ago when it was first available have earned hundreds of dollars). But, in addition, we will be adding even more benefits to the Ad Sharing / Premium program and it will play an important role in the master plan.

More details soon.

As soon as we have finished preparing the master plan overview, we’ll post it in the blog for all VirtaPay users to read. Check back soon!

The first step in our master plan is now complete. Facebook login is now optional.

How this affects things…

This change will open up VirtaPay to a wider audience worldwide. Not everyone likes Facebook, but even those who do may not be able to use it for various reasons. So, starting now…

• New users will have the option to log in with a username and password or using Facebook.
• Existing users can now create a username and password to use instead of—or along with—Facebook. Note: To do this, click on the new “Account Settings” link when you are on the main “My Account” page.

If you created your VirtaPay account last year, before we went to 100% Facebook logins, you can now use just your VirtaPay username and the original password you used to sign up. Just use the new login button found at the top of the VirtaPay website…

The next steps…

We are now preparing to move to the next phase in our master plan. As we talked about in our last post, our master plan has been designed to bring the VirtaPay currency into worldwide acceptance as a universal payment method.

We’ll have another post soon to explain more exciting details of what’s next for VirtaPay.

As mentioned in our last blog post, we are preparing to take VirtaPay to the next level… the final level. Our goal is to bring the VirtaPay currency into worldwide acceptance as a universal payment method.

Step 1: Facebook becomes optional

While it’s true that many people love to use Facebook, there are also many who don’t like it and refuse to use it. There are also people who are unable to create or use a Facebook account for various reasons.

Just because someone doesn’t like or can’t use Facebook does not mean that they shouldn’t be able to use VirtaPay. Limiting our users to a Facebook login works against our current goals of becoming a universal payment method.

And so, our first step will be to bring back a standard login, while leaving the Facebook login as an option for those who want to continue using it.

The master plan begins…

Once the Facebook login has been made optional, we will begin work on a long list of changes that have been carefully calculated to transform the VirtaPay currency into a worldwide universal payment method. We call this our “master plan”.

As part of this transformation, you, our current EarlyBird users, will have multiple opportunities to earn significant sums of VirtaPay currency.

This is especially exciting when you consider that our plans are designed to let you eventually spend or exchange your VirtaPay currency as you would any other world currency.

When will these changes happen?

We are beginning immediate work on the new master plan. The plan consists of multiple phases and as each phase is developed, it will be added to the VirtaPay website and put into immediate use.

Because each phase of the master plan builds on the previous phase, we expect it will take 4 or 5 months to reach the final phase. According to our current timeline, the master plan should be 90-100% complete, developed and in action by the end of September 2012.

We will post more information soon.

It’s been a while since our last post — please accept our sincere apologies. Don’t worry, VirtaPay is alive and well and ready to push into new territories.

Where we’ve been…

Once we released the new Open Payments framework and the API, we wanted to let things run for a while as we watched for any problems or issues that may have arisen. We are happy to report that everything is running smoothly with both Open Payments and the API.

During these past months, we were also working on new plans for moving VirtaPay forward in a big way.

Where we are headed…

We have been working behind the scenes, deciding the best way to take VirtaPay to the next level. The final level. We are now ready to begin working to bring the VirtaPay currency into worldwide acceptance as a universal payment method.

What does this mean for you?

Provided our new plans are effective…

• You will be able to spend your VirtaPay balance as you would any other world currency on any product or service available online, and eventually even offline.
• You will be able to exchange your VirtaPay balance freely into or out of any world currency of your choice.

More details soon

In this post, we wanted to let our users know that VirtaPay is alive and well. In our upcoming posts, we will provide you with more details about our new plans and the changes coming to VirtaPay as we begin our new drive forward.

“Open payments” are now live. What does this mean for you? Open payments allow you to request payment from VirtaPay buyers using a new type of pay button.

How do Open Payments work?

As covered in the last blog post, open payments are different from the existing system—here’s how…

• Create unlimited “buy now” buttons.
• Not listed on the VirtaPay Buy page.
• Not limited to digital items. All legal products and services are allowed.
• Not rated by buyers, as Buy page transactions are.

To create an open payment buy button, just click the “Sell” link when logged in. If you’re already logged in, just click here.

Get Ready for Growth

If you haven’t already done so, you may want to activate Ad Sharing on your account.  The new API and the new open payments features will allow developers to begin creating new services that integrate VirtaPay payments. We expect these new services will draw even more people to VirtaPay. By activating Ad Sharing (along with the included Premium Membership), you could benefit from this coming growth.

We will soon be releasing a new type of payment form that enables what we call “open payments”. As you may already know, our new API has the following functions available:

• Get your account balance.
• Post a payment from your account to any VirtaPay user.
• Get transaction details on any transaction in your account.

Although the new open payments system isn’t part of the API, it will let you create forms to request payments from other VirtaPay users.

Why Open Payments?

The new open payments system will allow sellers more options when selling with VirtaPay.

Currently, sellers can only offer a limited number of items on VirtaPay… and they must be digital items. You can use the “Sell” page to set up an item for sale. From there, it will show up on the “Buy” page.

Up until now, all sellers have been locked into using this system, which we know is rather limiting. That’s why the new open payments system is on the way.

What are Open Payments?

Here’s how open payments are different from the existing system…

• Open payments will allow you to create a simple HTML form which you can use to direct other VirtaPay users to pay you. Also, the HTML form is easy to modify, so it can be created dynamically by web services that use VirtaPay payments.
• Open payment transactions are not limited to digital items. In fact, you are free to sell anything that’s legal. But, remember, all transactions are between buyer and seller. VirtaPay does not mediate transactions. Please only deal with people you know and trust.
• Open payment transactions are not listed on the VirtaPay “Buy” page. Sellers will get an HTML form which they can use on their own websites.
• Open payment transactions are not “rated” by buyers, as the “Buy” page transactions are in the current system.
• You can use open payments to create unlimited payment request forms, unlike the items listed on the “Buy” page, which are strictly limited.

How can Open Payments be Used?

The new open payments system is designed to be very flexible. That’s why we named it “open”. It could—and probably will—be used in many different ways.

For example, if an auction website chose to integrate VirtaPay payments, they could use the new open payments system to dynamically create payment forms where auction sellers could pay their auction fees using their VirtaPay balance. In addition, they could create payment forms where the winner of an auction could pay the seller directly using their VirtaPay balance.

We expect the new open payments system to be released within a week. We’ll post to the blog again when we have more news.

The new API is now ready for testing. As we have mentioned in previous blog posts, we expect the API to open the door to new web services that will integrate VirtaPay payments.

Who is the API for? How do I use it?

To get a better understanding of the API, who it’s for and how to use it, visit the API Details page. To create your own API key, visit the API Access page.

IMPORTANT: The API is intended for users who know how to program web services. If you choose to create an API key, keep it a secret. Never share it with anyone you don’t trust. If your account has an API key, anyone who has that key will have the power to access your account, and even send payments. Again, be sure to keep it secret, like you would any password.

What functions does the API allow?

Version 1.0 of the API has the following functions available:

• Get your account balance.
• Post a payment from your account to any VirtaPay user.
• Get transaction details on any transaction in your account.

We may add more features in future upgrades to the API.

What benefit will the API bring to VirtaPay users?

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing that yet. But, we hope to see many new services begin to integrate VirtaPay payments using the API. This could include “get-paid-to” websites, currency exchanges, marketplaces for both physical and digital items, use of VP$ as an in-game currency, and more. The API opens the door for web services to integrate VirtaPay payments in a way never before possible.

How will developers know what people want?

Coming soon, we will post polls to find out what services our users want most. These polls will be shared with developers who want to create services based on the API.

In addition, we will soon begin accepting submissions from developers who have created services that use the API. We will review these submissions and notify VirtaPay users (using the blog) about the services we think you’ll like the most.

So, if you’re a web developer who already knows what you want to create using the API, get started today! There are over 150,000 VirtaPay users waiting to start using your new service.

We have some good news to share in today’s blog post. Version 1.0 of our new API (Application Programming Interface) is nearing completion. It looks like it will be ready to go live nearly a month before we expected!

If you’re a new user and haven’t read about how the API could benefit VirtaPay users, you may want to read this blog post first.

What’s left to finish?

There are two main areas that need work before the API goes live:

1. Our developers have created all of the API functions for Version 1.0 of the API. They are now doing some final testing before it goes live.
2. We are preparing documentation to explain to programmers how to call the API functions and how to process the results.

What’s planned next?

Once those things are finished, we will make the API available to all VirtaPay users at no cost for a while. This will give people and companies a chance to build web services that integrate VirtaPay payments. It will also allow us to do further testing and get feedback from API users to make sure the API is operating properly.

We don’t have specific plans for how long the API will be available for free. But, we eventually plan to make the API only available with a paid subscription for an API license. When the API becomes a “paid only” service, our Premium members can earn US$ from this as our exclusive affiliates. Learn more in this post.

Who can use the API?

The API will be available to all VirtaPay users. However, to create a web service that uses the API to integrate VirtaPay payments, you will either need web programming knowledge or you could hire a freelance web programmer.

An early tip for those eager to get started… the API will be a RESTful interface that returns results as JSON objects. You will only need to know what that means if you plan to develop a web service that uses the VirtaPay API.

What can the API be used for?

There are many useful services that VirtaPay users are hoping to see and just waiting for someone to develop using the API. Here are a few ideas: currency exchanges; get-paid-to websites; marketplaces (for both physical and digital items); mobile payment apps; in-game currency, etc.

We recently posted a more detailed answer to the blog. Be sure to have a look at this post if you are interested in developing a web service that integrates VirtaPay payments, or if you’re just interested to see what’s on the horizon as a VirtaPay user.

At this point, we expect Version 1.0 of the API to go live near the beginning of December. We’ll post more details as they become available.