Payments startup WePay raises $15M, kills direct-to-consumer offering
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
Having WePay sunset their consumer-facing products has a similar effect in that it allows us to transact more money through WePay while reducing potential confusion around which services are responsible for which part of the fundraising process.
The WePay team has always been extremely responsive to questions and feature requests, so I'm excited to see what they do with the added resources and renewed focus on partner services.
Yup, this is very important: it's one of the reasons why Balanced is 100% white label. We've heard this sentiment echoed over and over again from our customers. They want to own that relationship.
I want to focus on delivering value to my customers - I'm not trying to become a pay button implementation expert. I'm not very happy about wepay making this move. I think I am going to be switching to stripe.
At the end of the day, unlike Stripe which is building broader payment functionality - we're trying to provide payments for a very focused usecase: platforms (like marketplaces, crowdfunding sites, small business software, etc)
Any product that isn't directly working towards that takes resources away from our platform work. In addition, because it isn't our core focus, it won't be a best-in-class product. That's why we made the tough call to do this.
If there's anything I can do to help make the transition to Stripe or anyone else easier, please let me know - bill@wepay.com Thanks for being a customer.
We believe we can service platforms better by focusing on that usecase. For example, we built Veda, our risk engine the specializes in underwriting the risk of individuals and small businesses using social media. Because of this, we can pay out marketplace sellers faster, collect less data from them (making signup easier), and not hold the marketplace accountable for fraud loss.
I think that platforms are such an interesting segment of ecommerce that they deserve special attention.
Drop me an email and I'll tell you more. hany@ribbon.co
Sad to see these services go, but I can imagine that the support burden of a consumer-facing service is something they'll be glad to be rid of if nothing else.
You might want check out our partner invoiceASAP: www.invoiceASAP.com
Just to be clear, our fees are the same as stripe's - we're not any cheaper. Although I would still encourage you to check out our API for this usecase, as it's right up our alley.
The economics are dramatically different - PayPal makes about 3% of the transaction on a bank account funded payment, they make much less than 0.5% on a credit card funded payment.
So P2P is a loss leader to drive funding mix.
The fundamental difference with WePay is that we take the risk of loss, so marketplaces don't lose money to fraud. Balanced holds the marketplace liable for chargebacks.
Since they aren't taking the risk, Balanced does offer a greater flexibility around the user experience. We have produce improvements in the works to accomplish our vision of complete flexibility & no risk of loss. We also don't charge for payouts, which can make a significant pricing difference for marketplaces.
Best of luck!
>Once I don't have to ask my customers to make an extra click to accept payments I'll take a look at your solution again.
You actually can setup users via an API call today (so they can start accepting payments immediately) using our register call. They then have 14 days to confirm their email and set a password. On many sites this improves conversion double digit percentages over alternatives like PayPal.
Edit: More info here https://support.wepay.com/entries/31989493-Event-management-...
We actually have two apps with WePay support thus far, and we're in the process of adding it to EventSpot. I assure you, it will be there before WePay's events offering goes offline.
I have to be a bit vague about this, but I think you'll find post-WePay EventSpot to be very comparable to what you're getting from WePay right now.
So what's a good way to get an "add to cart" button that you can paste into some html and have customers check out without registering for accounts or seeing too much confusing 3rd party branding?
Many of their D2C products competed with the businesses that were using their APIs, so it makes sense to pick a channel and focus on just one side of the equation.
I really like everything about WePay other than the fact that it's limited to the US.
Writing some OAuth code is pretty much standard fare amongst the API providers....getting your cash? Now that's a different story.
There's no other API out there that is as transparent or seamless to a business, without the new business disruption of having to wait 1 week (or more) for the cash.
Venmo is a great product (I use it too! And so does Lucas.)
We originally launched WePay thinking we could build a great P2P experience and charge fees for it. We found that end-users preferred free options like Venmo & PayPal versus paid versions, so we gradually drifted up market in response.
We ended up serving platforms because they aggregate lots of individuals in a context where they expect to pay for payment processing. It leverages our core capability of processing payments for individuals, but it does so in a context where our business model makes sense.
WePay will still be the same backend, but you'll benefit from our partners' software, which is far better for donations than ours is.
EMEA? APAC? I guess both, and it'd be nice in Europe.