TwitPay – payments via Twitter

TwitPay has come up with a great new service to make payments via Twitter. The idea isnt new and has been floated around several times. However, this is probably the first such service to go live. 

The concept is simple. You fund your TwitPay account using Paypal. You can then make a payment to any other Twitter user using the regular Twitter syntax. For example:

@startupdunia twitpay $10 thanks for the service

The service is tightly coupled with Twitter. For instance, you dont need to sign up on Twitpay and can simply use your Twitter username to access your Twitpay profile. TwitPays (what others have paid you) will appear in the replies tab on your Twitter account. How simpler can it get ?

The two limitations of the service are that currently, you cant collect the TwitPays you have received, as cash. They’re still working on the legal issues, but till that happens, you’ll get repaid in the form of an Amazon gift card or you can donate the amount to charity. The other drawback of the service is that I was easily able to access and view the Twitpays (amount credited from Paypal and the amount paid out) for any user, which is imposed due to the fact that the Twitter updates have to be unprotected, and so you could view the Twitter update anyways. This might actually not fit well with folks concerned about their privacy.

Note that using TwitPay is more like ‘you promise to pay’. So, if you Twitpaid your friend and now dont want to honor it, its fine — you dont owe TwitPay anything. Every time you actually make a payment, TwitPay makes $0.05 for every transaction greater than $.99.

The service was built during the Atlanta Startup Weekend, an attempt to conceive, develop and launch a fully functional company within 54 hours. This service has the potential to become very popular for the very same reason that Twitter caught on like wildfire — its simplicity.

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