Paid Inc. is utilizing its existing patent-pending shipping rate engine technology to create two new shipping calculator services for the broader market of online merchandisers. Paid is seeking Web-based businesses willing to actively participate in beta testing and/or focus groups in August and September to examine and test its new ecommerce shipping calculator and shopping cart services that it plans to launch in October 2004. It currently offers software and calculators to eBay sellers.

"Exploding fulfillment-related and customer service expenses create a prime market opportunity for Paid to introduce cost-effective shopping cart and shipping calculator services to assist Internet merchants in accurately calculating their shipping and handling charges so they can pass this cost on to their customers," said Greg Rotman, CEO of Paid.

Paid cited new research out by the eTailing Group showing that 21% of online merchants have an online shopping cart abandonment rate of 50% or more. Paid also said respondents to a survey by Datamonitor cite that 21 percent of people abandon their orders due to complex order processes and 20 percent abandon their orders because the order process is too time consuming.

"This market is far larger than the online auction market for which we initially created our shopping cart and shipping calculator," said Rotman. "Some experts estimate that the number of small merchants on the Internet will increase 40 percent by 2004 to almost 3 million online merchants. This offers a tremendous potential for our products, especially when you consider that there are hundreds of thousands of larger online merchants who all face the same challenges of accurately calculating shipping costs for every sale they make."

Paid initially is creating two levels of functionality for its e-business shipping calculator and shopping cart services: basic and pro. The basic version provides standard features that can be used by any ecommerce business or Internet-enabled merchant or order-taking call center. The pro version has added functionality to accommodate users who need more robust shipping and handling calculation functionality to handle more complex ordering and shipping issues. The pro versions are designed for merchants using third party payment services such as the 50,000 merchants who use PayPal.

For information on how to participate in the beta testing and focus groups, contact Tom McGovern at 866-323-8833 or email info@paid.com.