Start-up offers innovative group payment features

Apr 2, 2010 14:05 GMT  ·  By

PayPal, eBay's payment platform, will have a run at its position as the leading online money transfer system with the launch of WePay, a well financed California start-up. This is possible mainly because of the new group payment features and other security and accessibility options for its clients.

The service spent the last six months in beta testing, being launched on March 31, 2010 as a final product. It got a huge media buzz in December 2010, when it pulled in around $1.65 billion of venture funding from famous moguls and investment companies. The list includes names like August Capital, Ron Conway – early investor for Google, Facebook and Twitter, Max Levchin, one of PayPal's founders, and Eric Dunn, former CTO & CFO of business e-commerce platform Intuit.

WePay's service allows users to set up FDIC-insured accounts, for which a valid WePay Visa card is emitted. The user can then invite people to join their group and contribute to the account's balance by collecting money and making group payments with it.

A simple task like setting up a fund-raiser or paying the rent is immensely simplified. The account's group leader can issue bills for all members to collect the needed money. After all the money has been transferred, the card holder can spend it using their WePay Visa card (pay the rent for all their room-mates, per example).

WePay charges 50 cents per transaction as an operation fee. The platform allows users to join and create as many groups as they want, without any limitations.

The project seems a dream come true for collaborative fund and payment management offering transparency for absolute all transfers, starting from the fund collection to all payments made. These features have long been absent from PayPal, being the main criticism to the platform.