1. (new) Conversion of funds from the monthly to the Premium Plan
2. Sequence and Order of Payments to be Made Feb. 01, 2010
3. Charitable Giving - Holidays, 2009
4. Issues with StrictPay.
5. Adding of new payment processor: Global Digital Pay
Greetings Once Again Loyal Friends & Associates of GNI:
In our ongoing effort to keep all of you informed we give to you our fourth Newsletter of the Calendar year 2010. What an exciting, certainly eventful, year it is appearing to be....
1. Converting Members Deposits from the Monthly to the Premium Plan(s)
As all of you should know, I have spent a great deal of time over the last couple weeks in the forum, reading emails and as much as possible, responding to the questions and issues that many of you have. These questions range from the mundane to the unattainable, along with everything else thrown in the mix. The issue which stands out amongst all the rest is member's desires to monetize their current (and new) holdings into the premium plan which will allow them to earn the higher interest rate characteristic of the better plan.
Therefore, those customers whose aggregate total exceeds $21,000, whether it is the result of one deposit or a successive series of deposits comprised of new money, interest payments or previously rec'd referral commission, will begin receiving the higher rate on ALL deposits made after the script recognizes the deposit. The script will recognize a deposit for consideration into the higher plan following a payment of interest. While this may appear complicated, it's not.
I will give a couple of examples:
Example A - Customer Lam
Customer Lam has four active deposits; three in the monthly plan (a deposit for $5000, one for $10,000 and one for $15,000) and one in the premium plan ($21,000). In Feb, Lam receives 16% on his three deposits which did not, individually, exceed $21,000, but will (the higher 20% interest) on his single deposit for $21,000.
As a result of our recent decision, beginning in March, Lam will receive, because his deposits, collectively exceeded 21k, the higher rate of interest on all his deposits and on any subsequent deposits including interest payments until his 14 months has expired on his 21K deposit which would bring his cumulative total back under 21k, reducing his remaining deposits to the lower 16% for the remainder of his active deposits, unless he added to his account bringing it back up over the $21,000 mark.
Example B - Hausfrau
Hausfrau isn't as financially savvy as Lam but has nevertheless, three deposits and wants to make a new one. Her current deposits are each $5000 with interest being awarded on Feb. 17th, 18th and 19th - collectively totaling $15,000; she has not added her new deposit (after having found lots of nickels, dimes and quarters in the laundry) of another $5000 because she's blond and forgot to do this (she was working on her taxes she forgot to do over the last 3 years, instead). In February, Hausfrau will earn 16% on each of her three $5000 deposits; ($800 on the 16th, again on the 17th and finally $800 on the 18th - 30 days after the recorded date of the deposit).
GNI Hausfrau now has $17,400 in her GNI account (3x $5000 principal + 3x $800 interest). All of these funds continue to earn at the 16% rate. GNI Hausfrau looses her blond hair and remembers to deposit her nickels and dimes with her favorite PP, $5000 with SP who successfully adds this to her GNI account. Hausfrau would begin earning 20% on this deposit. She would not earn 20% on her other deposits because the script, as previously stated will not recognize a deposit for consideration into the higher plan until AFTER the next interest is paid.
GNI Hausfrau's three $5000 deposits would begin to start earning the higher rate of interest as soon as the interest is awarded on the 15th, 16th and 17th.
All subsequent deposits would earn at the higher rate (20%) as well, until the deposits began to expire (following the 14th month / cycle). Once the aggregate total amount of deposits fell below $21,000, she would then earn the lower rate of returns.
NOTE: the resemblance of these examples to any known GNI staff person is purely coincidental :)
We are currently implementing this new feature and as from mid next week new deposits (incl. reinvestments of interest) will automatically added to the 20% plan, if the total deposits equals or exceeds $21K
2. Schedule for Payment Requests and Payments for February, 2010
While it had originally been our intention to pay members on a first-come, first-serve basis; this is seemingly unfair to many members while lending itself to the very real possibility of a server overload / crash and less than desirable ramifications including the inability to get anyone paid; a distraction we neither want or need.
Therefore, we have decided to modify the original plan and in its place provide the means and method to select the particular GNI payee based on a random selection of GNI account IDs.
We will be using a random number generator to select the payment date of your interest payment.
A random number generator is a computational algorithm tasked with generating a group or sequence of characters lacking any discernable pattern.
In other words, you will be paid at some point between the 8th and 28th of February. When you make your withdraw request has NO impact nor will it influence in any way when you will actually receive your funds.
The procedure to withdraw your funds is no different than it was prior to the reorganization, therefore no explanation is warranted in this Newsletter.
3. Final Totals for the Charitable Recipients - 2009
Uganda4Life
$43,158.48 with 387 donations
Kids4Life
(some additional due diligence is being conducted prior to the release of funds)
A couple comments are appropriate as some of our client base truly stepped up in support of the effort these charities and their participants give trying to help those persons who are least able to help themselves, orphaned and / or sick children.
a. GNI has roughly 11,000 funded accounts.
b. A total of 971 separate donations were made.
c. Assuming no member made more than one donation (which is patently erroneous, every member that I am aware of made multiple donations to both charities), roughly 8.8% (call it 9%) of our customer base contributed to the survival of children in parts of the world that are subjected to conditions we couldn't even pretend to fathom.
To those 9% who sought to help the helpless by donating we embrace you and your efforts; are proud to help you achieve some of your monetary goals you have set for yourselves prior to joining GNI.
To the 91% of the GNI membership who chose NOT to participate, we are confident you have found a charitable organization better suited to your tastes and interests. We, likewise, are proud to help you achieve your monetary goals you have established before coming to our project.
Consistent with our reorganization plan which, out of necessity demands the program is restored to its previous financial strength, a decision encumbered on monetary health of the program, fairness to the customer base, the intent of the donors and the needs of the charities was reached to ascertain the most practical way to distribute the funds to these fine causes.
Uganda4Life will be receiving 4 payments of equal amounts spread over four months beginning the first week of February and concluding the first week of May, 2010; predicated by the total amount reflected above.
These payments will be made to the account of their choice as determined by the appropriate person with authority to make this decision. All transfer information will be made available to those individuals who have a vested interest in either the payment process or that charity in particular.
4. Issues Currently Affecting StrictPay
The following update has been provided by Strictpay to and for its clients:
Customers
Our support staffs have been contacted numerous times asking if we are having "money problems" or "cash flow issues". We are not having any money problems at all, but we have recently had to move very large amounts of funds to different bank accounts. When moving large amounts of funds to the new bank accounts, they have put a hold on the funds for a certain time frame, and this has caused us major delays as these holds can last 15 to 20 business days. We thought it would be best to send an update to all customers, even though it will be lengthy. Please take the time to read this entire message carefully, as we believe it will answer some questions you may have.
Banks in the United States do not like doing business with any type of company that they feel are processing payments as a third party processor, or are acting like a bank in their eyes. This issue, as well as numerous other over-regulatory and intrusive U.S. banking issues, has caused problems for our contracted agents. This has become an increasingly problematic issue over the last few years as we are sure many of you know, and thus has made all U.S. dealings that much more difficult to deal with. This of course affects some aspects of our business, with the most obvious example being the ability to do ACH transactions for our U.S. customers.
These U.S. related issues were why we recently made one of the banks we have been dealing with for a couple of years a public option to withdraw and deposit funds for our customers. We thought this would be a rather quick solution, but very soon realized that they could not handle the mass volume of daily transactions that our customers complete within the time frames that we have promised in the past. We also had some customers tell us that their bank wire instructions are far too complicated. This issue caused many of the wires to be completed incorrectly by some customers or their banks, and these funds would then be sent back to the sender after a 7 to 10 day hold. These issues, as well as others, made us realize that we needed to find completely new banking options that could handle both the high volume and the processing time frames our customers had become accustomed to.
Having then changed to another bank caused us more delays, as we again had to move a very large amount of funds that were subject to their hold times. Once these funds started getting released to us, you could see that our outgoing wire time frames got much better again, and are now in the 2 to 4 business day range. These 2 to 4 business days will now be our normal time frame for bank wire withdraws. Incoming bank wires are also getting to us much quicker now with this new bank, and we have been told by many customers that the new bank wire instructions are much easier to understand as well. With the difference in time zones, and also the varying locations and banks that the funds are being sent from, a bank wire can take 1 to 5 business days to reach us. We are seeing that in most cases they will reach us within 2 business days, but we must state the time frame for bank wire deposits as 1 to 5 business days to cover all situations.
We have also recently had the first loading delays ever with our debit card platform since it was setup in June 2009. The new bank that we are sending the debit card funds from is having an issue that they need to get worked out with the receiving bank, and once they get this issue taken care of we will then start loading major funds to that account so that you can get your funds in the proper time frames once again.
Our number one objective is to make sure that your money is safe, and this is why we will take very calculated steps before we offer any new funding or withdraw options. We have many things that we are working on behind the scenes to make sure we can once again offer many different funding and withdraw options, but these things will likely take many months to complete. We have other banks that we have held accounts with for years, and we are also looking into what services they may offer us in regards to more of a public account with them. Keeping our customers funds and information secure and private is always of the utmost importance for us.
We are also working on a short term solution to allow check withdraws again, and we hope to have more information on this issue in the coming weeks. Unfortunately the fees may be slightly higher, and there will be some limits in place, but we feel it is important to at least give some of our customers an option to withdraw by check until we have a long term solution in place.
We know these delays have been frustrating to all of you, and they have been to us as well. As a way of saying thank you for continuing to choose StrictPay as your payment option through these trying times, we will be lowering the receiving fee on funds transferred from 2% to 1.5% until 2-28-2010. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this trying time, and we promise to continue to work hard to find long term options of deposit and withdraw that will continue to make us the best payment option available today.
Team StrictPay
There have been many questions being asked on behalf of Strictpay.
5. Global Digital Pay
Given the persistent and on-going challenges that seem to be an on-going battle and on request of many members, we have decided to introduce a new PP called Global Digital Pay. They are similar to LR in price and fees (reasonable) but have chosen to respect common laws and decency.
We encourage you to check them out and consider using this in your future on-line business transactions: https://www.globaldigitalpay.com
The Global Digital Pay payment interface will be implement during the course of next week.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
With best regards,
Robert and your GNI Team
