This morning, I received an email from Dan.com announcing a required update to my payment settings: “Action required! Update your payout settings | Dan.com” The email was sent to customers to notify them that Payoneer will be handling the company’s bank payouts. A second email that followed clarified that an update is not required for customers who do not wish to work with Payoneer.

I reached out to Dan CEO Reza Sardeha, and he told me there are two reasons for why Dan implemented Payoneer as an additional payment option:

1: To decrease the time funds require to land in your bank account as Dan sends international wires while Payoneer sends local wires

2: Eliminate intermediary bank fees

I am not very familiar with Payoneer, but you may recall Payoneer once (briefly) offered an escrow service for domain name sales. Customers who receive payouts to their banks can choose to connect an existing Payoneer account or create a new Payoneer account via their onboarding program if they want to take advantage of the new partnership.

The subsequent email clarified that customers who want to continue to be paid via bank wire the way they have been paid may opt to not update anything. Since I have not worked with Payoneer before, with the exception of their escrow service several years ago, I intend to keep the status quo for my bank wire payout information. If I learn of an advantage to using Payoneer, I may change my mind.

Here’s the initial email announcement from Dan.com:

When I think about companies that might advocate for domain name investing, Verizon is not one of the first few dozen that would pop into my head. In fact, Verizon has been fairly aggressive towards cybersquatters over the years. Obviously domain investing and cybersquatting are not one and the same, but I do think there is a fair amount of overlap, particularly with newer domain investors who don’t really know the laws about cybersquatting.

This morning, I was doing a bit of research on Google related to domain investing and the companies who are advertising, and I came across an article on Verizon’s website about domain investing: It’s Not Too Late To Start Domain Investing. To say that I was surprised there is an article about domain investing on Verizon’s website would be an understatement.

In May of last year, I wrote about the possibility of fractional domain name ownership coming to Rally, a venture backed platform that allows users to purchase shares in various types of collectible assets. Yesterday on Domain Name Wire, Andrew Allemann reported that Rally has added domain names as an asset class to its platform. Fractional ownership shares of Directions.com will be for sale within the next couple of hours and other domain names appear destined to follow.

From what I understand, Andrew Rosener of Media Options has played a pivotal role in getting domain names added to Rally. This morning in a series of tweets, Rosener commented about why he became involved in the project and the value he expects it to bring to the domain name aftermarket:

By many accounts, this past year has been pretty excellent for domain name sales. I think the final numbers published on DNJournal and NameBio will reflect this. The sales numbers will only grow as domain name transactions are reported in SEC filings on a trailing basis.

It has gotten much more expensive to acquire domain names, but that is a natural result of a strong aftermarket. From my perspective, there are many sectors of the domain name aftermarket that grew this year. It’s not just a hot .com market.

Domain investing is a challenging business. It takes a considerable amount of time and money to build a domain investment portfolio, and there is no guaranteed success. Domain investing can be a lucrative business, but there is a pretty steep learning curve for most people.

This morning, I saw a tweet from someone named Tony who reported six figures in domain name sales: