When you think about ecommerce payments, you might think about entities like shopping carts and services like Google Checkout or PayPal. These kinds of features work when you operate an online store. But for lots of people, they just aren't appropriate. If you need to send an invoice to get paid and you don't have an online store, you can turn to a free payment service aggregator based in Boulder, Colorado called InspirePay that was launched December 20.
According to founder and CEO Mark Fischer, InspirePay's first and free payment product enables an individual or business to create a "Pay Me" page that aggregates all of the payment services they already use. These can include a merchant account, the Stripe payment system , and the familiar online payment services PayPal, Google Checkout and Dwolla. It can be described as an "About Me" page of payments, he says.
"Ideal uses include any situation where pricing varies, such as wholesale sales or services linked to an invoice," explains Fischer, who has been an online strategy consultant for the past twelve years, and has run the merchant services provider Inspire Commerce for more than four years. "People are already using it for more person to person situations as well, such as beer money, splitting a meal among friends, and even raising money for simple things like Christmas gifts for teachers where all of the parents are chipping in."
Users who create an InspirePay page can quickly request payment by sending a link, such as When the recipient clicks on the link, he or she pays, and the sender of the link receives their $50. If a seller or service provider leaves the dollar amount off the link, the payment page asks the person paying to specify a dollar amount.
Fischer says InspirePay's primary target market consists of individuals who want to be paid online but who don't want to depend on a shopping cart system. Many of the service's customers include graphic designers who do all of their business online. You can read Fischer's vision in a June blog post entitled Electronic Payments Manifesto .
Users can make a link to their InspirePay page from their website or create a donation form that is integrated with an invoicing system such as QuickBooks or Peachtree Accounting. Users have to have a payment system in place before they start using InspirePay; the site is intended for individuals who use more than one system and want to present clients or customers with different payment options in a single location.
InspirePay will follow the initial free version with offerings in coming months that are more oriented toward businesses that have online storefronts with shopping carts. These will extend the system to third-party applications such as shopping carts and software as a service systems.
About the Author
Greg Holden is EcommerceBytes Contributing Editor. He is a journalist and the author of many books, including "Starting an Online Business For Dummies," "Go Google: 20 Ways to Reach More Customers and Build Revenue with Google Business Tools," and several books about eBay, including "How to Do Everything with Your eBay Business," second edition, and "Secrets of the eBay Millionaires, both published by Osborne-McGraw Hill. Find out more on Greg's website, GregHolden.com , which includes his blog, a list of his books, and his fiction and biographical writing.
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