Metacafe has over 25 million unique views per month. And yesterday the company officially announced that they have officially raised $30 million in Series C from Highland Capital, DAG Ventures, Accel Partners, and Benchmark Capital. While YouTube dominates traffic for online video, it seems that Metacafe has a more established business model since users are actually rewarded financially for their creativity.

“Metacafe is defining the next generation of online video, moving away from simple video sharing and hosting to delivering an exceptional entertainment experience for short-form content, said Richard de Silva, Partner, Highland Capital Partners. “Its sophisticated approach to audience-driven programming is unique in the industry.”

With this round of funding, Metacafe plans on supporting continuous operations and developing the Producer Rewards program further. The Producer Rewards program gives users a financial incentive to develop intriguing video content. For every thousand views a video gets on a site, the user will receive $5. The video has to reach a minimum of 20,000 views.

Highland Capital Partners’ Richard de Silva and DAG Ventures’ Tom Goodrich will join Metacafe’s Board of Directors. Metacafe is privately headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. and has offices in Tel Aviv, Israel and NYC, NY.

References:
[1] alarm:clock: Video Site MetaCafe Hammers $30M Round

 
Greylock Partners announced today that they would be investing $4 million in New York City based company, Payoneer.  Payoneer is a company that allows companies and business partners to pay each other via MasterCard online.  Payoneer is a private company that markets and manages prepaid MasterCard cards and works with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the First Bank of Delaware to process card transactions.

Upon realizing the importance of developing strong partnerships with Web 2.0 companies, Payoneer currently works with selected business allies such as Metacafe, Amie St., oDesk, and BitWine.  Using such a service could also be very beneficial for Web 2.0 start-ups with only a few employees that share office expenses.

“The Internet payout space may well become a killer application in the next few years as Internet companies transition to smarter ways to pay out their partners around the globe,” stated Moshe Mor, a partner at Greylock Partners. “Payoneer’s team has deep payments experience, and an already impressive track rate of customer adoption and solutions. We’re delighted to work in partnership with Payoneer to fuel the company’s expanded market presence.” 

“Web-driven businesses have the unique opportunity to use payments as a retention tool, not just a cost line-item,” stated Yuval Tal, the CEO and founder of Payoneer. “With our additional funding on board, we’ll be adding to our team, expanding our service offerings, and working aggressively to win new accounts during this exciting high-growth time in our market.” 

Payoneer was founded in 2005 and maintains a research and development facility in Tel Aviv, Israel.   The co-branded MasterCards provided by Payoneer can be used anywhere whether it is in any store, online, or ATMs that MasterCards are accepted.

Proven Model Cases:
Citigroup Inc./eCount Inc.
“The prepaid card market is experiencing high growth, and is currently estimated at more than $2 trillion worldwide, as corporations and consumers continue to move from paper checks to electronic-based payment methods” states a Citibank press release announcement of the fairly recent eCount Inc. acquisition.

eBay Inc./PayPal
Another proven model is the legendary $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal.  In July 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock.  PayPal now has 114 million customers as of October 2006 over 103 markets and 17 different currencies.

It is expected that with this round of funding that Payoneer will become hypercompetitive amongst some of the major aforementioned players out there.  I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll start seeing the Payoneer logo quite a bit more as we shop online.

[Information Source: E-mail from PR Representative for Greylock Partners]