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

Additionaly, we discussed an article written by 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.

Freshly armed with this information I decidedly looked at their associated, and I use this term very loosely here, "intellectual property" which solely 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...

This leads me to my point. I have a "common sense" question that I'd like to pose here. By the way, it's the same question I posed to myself when I decided not to move forward in my attempt to acquire ATMDirect.

But before posing the question, I would ask that you first take a look at the numbers shown in the graphic on the left. (to get a bigger picture of my point, click the picture and focus on the "debit". Okay, now on with my ponderings...

For a measly $600k, wouldn't one, or even 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 ALL 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."

HomeATM would be willing to have the "PIN Off" supervised by a knowledgeable, non-partisan entity. One suggestion among many as a "fair and balanced" arbitrator was John Stewart" the Editor in Chief of Digital Transactions Magazine.

Will you, ATMDirect accept? I think the real question is: Will ATMDirect even "be able" to accept? If so, will ATMDirect be able to do so "securely" without any glitches? That is the gist of the challenge.

My take is they won't. It's too "Rocky" a road for them to travel. They know that it's simply a case of the Contender vs. the Pretender...

However, I've been known to be wrong before, so...ATMDirect, prove me wrong! If you don't think that HomeATM would "PIN U" into the proverbial corner, feel free to accept the invitation to an offical PIN Off by emailing me at: ATMDirect Hereby Accepts