GreenZap Launches AJAX-Powered Classifieds Site

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Wednesday, October 18, 2006; 01:33 AM

GreenZap, Inc., a provider of secure online payment services, recently launched a beta version of its classifieds site, ZapExchange. The new classifieds enable online users to post a variety of listings free of charge, in order to further the growth of the GreenZap community. Popular categories include merchandise for sale, jobs, personals, events and housing. “We are ecstatic to have ZapExchange live. All of our programmers have been working overtime to launch this site, and it paid off! The site looks amazing and is so easy to use,” said Michael Bernstein, GreenZap’s COO. Within the first hour of a soft launch, the site received several postings including one for a 1988 Audi bumper from a poster in Niles, Illinois.

To celebrate its launch and to drive listings, ZapExchange is running a promotion through October 31, 2006, where sellers can earn $1 cash back for every item sold, and each day a random poster will win $100.

ZapExchange has succeeded at incorporating the ‘coolness’ factor with its unique picture display tool. Users can post up to 5 pictures and when clicked, each picture expands and comes to the forefront as the background is grayed out. The unique display showcases the image and heightens the shopping experience. The site was built using several programming languages including AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a language commonly known to increase usability and interactivity by expediting the load time for each page of the website.

Another predominant feature of the website is the ability for GreenZap users to spend the rewards dollar, WebCash, to purchase items on ZapExchange. According to VP of Marketing Linda Murphy, “Sellers can elect to accept a portion of their sale price in WebCash, GreenZap’s rewards dollar. Their listing will be highlighted with a ‘WebCash Accepted’ symbol, and we anticipate it will attract some of the 760,000+ GreenZap account holders who have WebCash to spend,” continued Murphy. “For example, if you want to sell your cell phone and are asking $100 for it, you could accept $10 in WebCash and drive more traffic to your listing over other phones listed at the same price.”

GreenZap, an online payment facilitator similar to PayPal, launched a year and a half ago and was quickly targeted by its competitors. For example eBay, owner of PayPal , updated its policies listing GreenZap, Google Checkout, Neteller and others as prohibited payment options for its buyers and sellers. GreenZap persevered given its challenges over the last year and remained undeterred, developing its own, fully-customized classifieds system, ZapExchange.

According to GreenZap’s CEO, Damon Westmoreland, “ZapExchange embraces the essence of our vision that we started with for GreenZap in early 2005. Our vision was, and is, to build a safe transactional community, where our users can be rewarded and benefit from the growth of the company.”

GreenZap, Inc., a San Diego, California-based company, enables any business or individual with an email address to send and receive money securely and cost-effectively online. GreenZap is building its network on the existing infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards to create a global payment system. GreenZap’s system resembles PayPal (eBay’s payment processor), which reports over 100 million users and a 2005 total dollar volume of payments of $27.5 billion.

GreenZap differentiates itself by charging flat-rate fees versus a percentage of each transaction, and rewards its customers for using GreenZap’s services. Since opening June 1, 2005, GreenZap has grown to over 760,000 users. For more information, visit www.greenzap.com.