Bespoke Business Case Studies
LOVEFiLM.com Success Story
"LOVEFiLM.com now uses a wide variety of the Protx services including recurring billing, CV2 fraud screening, multiple Terminal IDs and direct refund. The two businesses have worked closely with one another, with continuity in the account team over the four years in question."
LOVEFiLM.com is Europe’s leading online DVD rental business, offering home entertainment via a combination of DVDs-through-the-post and internet downloads.
Company History
The business has grown rapidly since its formation in 2003 as ScreenSelect.co.uk due to a mixture of acquisitions and organic growth. As a result, LOVEFiLM.com now operates in five countries across Europe. Following the recently announced acquisition of Amazon’s DVD rental business, LOVEFiLM now has around 1 million subscribers.
The company has been voted one of the Sunday Times Top 100 Fastest Growing Technology Companies and has won numerous awards including the UK Technology – Innovation and Growth award for Mediatech Impact, 2008.
The Challenge
LOVEFiLM.com has always been conceived as an online business. Our customers sign up online, manage their film list online and even interact with our customer service teams primarily online. LOVEFiLM customers provide us with their payment details and are billed on a regular basis for their subscription.
We therefore needed to find an online payment provider that would allow us to bill our customers securely on a regular (usually monthly) basis for their subscription.
The Solution
LOVEFiLM.com (then trading as ScreenSelect.co.uk) adopted Protx for its UK business in 2004, after switching from an alternative provider.
We considered all of the leading Payment Service Providers at the time, but in the end we chose Protx for the reasons set out below:
- The Protx business model was best suited to the LOVEFiLM subscription model that relies on a high volume of low value recurring transactions (mostly under £20).
- Protx offered high security standards and fraud screening to complement LOVEFiLM’s industry leading fraud rates.
- We felt that the technology features offered by Protx were best-in-class, with the added benefit that almost all of these features were supported through their extensive API library.
- Protx offered very competitive commercial terms, and we liked the way that their way of doing business aligned closely with that of LOVEFiLM.
Implementation
When we came to implement Protx we followed the standard implementation route, using the Protx website for documentation and support. Since then we have extended the range and depth of our relationship with Protx and can contact our account manager as first point of call, alongside the website tools on offer.
Results
LOVEFiLM.com has grown as a business from a standing start in 2003 to an established business in 2008 using Protx to collect over £4 million in subscriptions per month.
We now use a wide variety of the Protx services including recurring billing, CV2 fraud screening, multiple Terminal IDs and direct refund.
We have continued to work closely with Protx, and have built up a good relationship with our account manager over this time. Thanks to the close relationship the two businesses have shared, we have been able to support each other over the four years in question, and we hope to do so in the years to come.
To visit the LOVEFiLM website please go to http://www.lovefilm.com
