A month ago the United Precious Metals Association began a promotion where anyone creating a new account would be shipped a free Goldback in the mail. Since that time over 1,000 Goldbacks have been shipped to new members. We anticipate keeping the program open for as long as it makes sense to. Originally about 3,800 Goldbacks were set aside for the promotion.
Growth has picked up from about 10-20 new accounts today to several hundred per day. It is forcing UPMA to streamline more of their services as they have been a vaulting entity up until this point. Credit card payments are just an example of that. UPMA is planning to begin offering payments by card online within the next couple of weeks when the 25 and 50 denominations become available.
What we are finding is that most new people doing the promotion are from word of mouth as people show off their Goldbacks. This is important because it shows how much excitement there is about the project.
UPMA won’t be the exclusive retailer of the Goldback forever either, dozens of retailers are in the pipeline to begin selling the Goldback as soon as October 1st. The goal is to have a retailer in every Utah county by the end of the year as well as several online retailers.
About 70% of all Goldback sales have taken place outside of the State of Utah. We expect this trend to continue as the Goldback can be used in a barter transaction virtually anywhere.