HomeATM Officially Invites ATMDirect to a "PIN Off"

I was speaking with Ken Mages, the founder and CEO of HomeATM and George Gendron, HomeATM's President regarding ATMDirect's questionable press release last Sunday, and the notion of calling them on their bluff came up.

We also discussed an article in Digital Transaction News, whereby Rajiv Grover, an investor in ATMDirect said. “Our intention is to own Internet PIN debit transactions.”

Remember...I took at close look at ATMDirect when it went up for auction and when I began digging into ATMDirect's business my conclusion was that the asset value of the associated personal property (i.e. servers, networking equipment, computers and office equipment) was worth (in an eBay resale) between $500,000 and $750,000.

With this information I looked at the associated, and I use this term very loosely here, "intellectual property" which consisted of a single patent. (not 25 global patents as stated in ATMDirect's recent press release)

In what I consider to be a "more than bold" statement, the new owners of ATMDirect went on to say: "Over the course of the next 90 to 120 days, ATM Direct is set to contract with a major, publicly held acquirer to sign merchants, receive certifications from a couple of major electronic-funds transfer networks, and sign a number of large merchants, according to officials with ATM Direct and its new parent company, Accullink LLC.

I have a common sense question to pose here. It's the same question I posed to myself when I decided not to move forward with my attempt to acquire ATMDirect.

But first, take a look at the numbers shown in the graphic, which you can click to enlarge, on the left.

For a measly $600k, don't you think that PayPal, BillMeLater, Amazon, First Data, Heartland, CyberSource, (the list goes on forever) would have been interested in acquiring the assets of ATMDirect? If any of those aforementioned companies could have "owned PIN Debit on the Internet," a $94 BILLION dollar market for only $600k, doesn't your common sense dictate that they would have been involved?

For obvious reasons they were glaringly absent.

Thus the only logical assumption that a pragmatic person can make is that there's nothing there. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post.

I was talking with both the CEO/Founder and President of HomeATM, and the notion of calling them on their bluff (Myth'd it By That Much...) came up.

The fairest and most arbitrary way would be to challenge them to an old-fashioned showdown which was dubbed during the course of our conversation, a "PIN-OFF". Techno vs. Techno.

HomeATM would be willing to have the "PIN Off" supervised by a knowledgeable, non-partisan entity.

One suggestion as a "fair and balanced" arbitrator was John Stewart" the Editor in Chief of Digital Transactions Magazine.

We'd be willing to showcase the HomeATM technology and ATMDirect would be and is hereby invited to do the same. Will ATMDirect accept?

I think the real question is: Will they "even be able to accept?" And will they be able to do so securely without any glitches? That is the gist of the challenge. To find out more, please visit www.PINcept.com or www.PINdebit.blogpsot.com or contact me at jfrank@homeatm.net