Chris Teso founded Chirpify in May 2011. The company’s payment service launched in February 2012 and in April received $1.3 million in Series A financing led by Voyager Capital.
Chirpify’s payment service connects to a user’s PayPal account and enables a person to send payments to individuals or businesses by tweeting at the recipient’s Twitter handle. PayPal is the only supported payment method for now, but Chirpify has much grander plans for the future.
From an American Banker article:
“We really want to open [Chirpify] up, to let a consumer attach any kind of payment device,” says Chris Teso, Chirpify’s founder. “So we will become more of a payments platform.”
“To hook up multiple payment platforms to it and at the same time hook up multiple identities” is the mission, says Teso, “Once you have that, we become a portable open ID for payments.”
Consumer demand for electronic P2P payments is difficult to identify even though several companies are targeting this payments segment. Adoption is still relatively low, but cost and convenience will be crucial to winning customers. Chirpify has managed to leverage a popular social network to bring conveneince to its service, but the company’s advertised “low 4% transaction fee” may not be low enough to attract many users.
Click here to read more from American Banker.