In a move that will save sellers money and encourage use of its platform, social commerce startup Chirpify now allows sellers to accept credit cards and send and accept automated clearing house (ACH) payments. The company had until Tuesday used only PayPal to process payments.
Chirpfy enables people to buy, sell, tip and fundraise within Twitter, Facebook and Instagram through nothing but words. A buyer enters credit card information, bank routing number or PayPal account when creating a new Chirpify account. A seller makes an offer in a Tweet and includes a call to action that requests words like “buy” or “want” to purchase an item. After a buyer replies, Chirpify carries out the transaction with stored information.
Payment is a “main friction point” for customers, says CEO Chris Teso. Chirpify now accepts American Express, Discover, Visa and MasterCard. “It will open us up to a wider audience with both domestic and international credit cards,” says Teso. PayPal is popular but hardly ubiquitous. There are over 600 million credit cards in the United States and the average person carried between three and four cards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Opening up the platform to other payments will save sellers money. PayPal allows buyers to make payments via credit card, although it also deducts from the buyer’s PayPal account balance. Accepting a PayPal transaction results in a 2.9% fee plus 30 cents for PayPal plus the Chirpify fee. Cutting out PayPal allows the seller to pay only the Chirpify fees.
Chirpify has over 20,000 sellers that offer goods ranging fro digital content to handmade goods, according to Teso. It has also attracted between ten and 20 major brands thus far, including the Portland Trailblazers NBA team, the Portland Timbers Major League Soccer franchise, athletic brands Adidas and Puma and fashion brand House of Holland. Green Day and Snoop Dogg are among the artists who have used the platform.
