Tweet Crunch

Send payments through Twitter with Twitpay

Posted on 10. Nov, 2008 by John in Twitter, Twitter Apps

twitpay is a new site that just went live a short while ago. The service will allow you to send money to your Twitter pals via the gift of the tweet, here’s how it got started;

TwitPay was created during Atlanta Startup Weekend, an experiment in entrepreneurship designed to conceive, develop and launch a fully functional company within 54 hours. A team of @ivey, @tensigma, @schulty, @markpercival, @jraines, @ionamerican, @ideakitchn, @lance, and @_decius_ wanted to create a payments solution that integrated seamlessly with the way Twitter’s users already interact with their system. The result was TwitPay, a simple way to send payments in 140 characters or less.

To start using twitpay you will need to put some money in, the account is funded via paypal and the minimum deposit you have to make is $10. the amount will be debited shortly afterwards and you are ready to start paying people.

To make a payment simply follow @twitpay and send the following tweet for example @<user> twitpay $5 <reason> the transaction will then be released 30mins after they are committed to twitpay.

Any money a user puts into the system can only be withdrawn once the amount in there account is over the $10 minimum and there is a flat rate transaction fee of $.05 for each twitpay over $0.99.

Having not used the service myself, the one thing that stands out for me is the security issue, I would like to see some kind of master password for my account so that twitpay can confirm it is me sending the transaction, and also a clear set of instructions on what would happen if somebody else were to send payment without my authorisation, where would twitpay stand on this issue and would they credit it back?

Tags: paypal, twitpay, Twitter