
Payments company WePay (YC S09) raises $40M to go global - billclerico
http://fortune.com/2015/05/20/wepay-funding-payments/
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tomasien
It's incredibly impressive that WePay has managed to differentiate itself and
stay independent in the credit card API / marketplace payments space. Balanced
seemed to have dramatically higher mind share and felt compelled to shut down.

I've been asked to explain WePay's place in the market before and have been
unable to - I'm not sure if their risk / chargeback protection is what puts
them over the top, great BD people, I'm not sure. However, assuming their
funding is a sign of progress, they're doing something right despite stiff,
direct competition and that's awesome.

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billclerico
Thanks for the kind words. (Bill from WePay here)

We keep a relatively low profile, since we focus primarily on marketplaces &
platforms with >$10m in annual payment volume and take a pretty deep,
enterprise approach with our customers vs focusing on a broadly available,
self-service developer platform. One day we hope to get there too, but for now
we like to go narrow and deep for the sake of focus and providing a killer
customer experience.

As far as product differentiation, we focus on marketplace fraud & risk
management above all else. It's a tough problem to solve - most fraud systems
are built to protect retailers from bad buyers, but the most insidious fraud
risk on marketplaces is from bad sellers. We guarantee our customers against
this type of loss while still providing a great overall UX.

Happy to chat more! bill@wepay.com

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sachinag
Having run a marketplace, the scammers are just ridiculous. The one I remember
most is that some group stole the credit card numbers of a church group to
"buy" PS3s from fake sellers. Thankfully, they were really naive about it, so
we reversed all the transactions before they hit, but that's just the tip of
the iceburg.

So here's a question: so what do your customers use before they hit $10MM in
ARR and get on your radar?

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billclerico
It's a smattering of options: PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe & Braintree are
all good ones. We have folks that start with us from day 1, but typically
fraud isn't too much of a concern until you start to really scale, and so our
value proposition isn't as strong. We're working on ways to change that!

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eberfreitas
The article title says "to go global" but the article itself does not
elaborate on that. Is it really going global? Or goig other places in the
globe?

In Brazil we have a lot of companies trying to fix the money problem, but none
seems to have the sophistication that you may find in Stripe or WePay.

If you are from Brazil and knows any companies like that, I would like to
know!

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coffeemug
Congrats Bill and team! Your success reminds me of Joe Siegler's anecdote
about his career in the gaming industry:

 _> Long before I was hired to work at Epic Games, I emailed John Carmack and
asked him what it took to get into the industry. His response consisted of a
single sentence: "Talent will be rewarded."_

So happy to see your talent is being rewarded!

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joeblossom
This is awesome news for marketplaces who see the value in processing
payments. Marketplace payments are a tough egg to crack and after meeting
their CEO, Bill, and learning more of future plans, I think they're headed in
the right direction.

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throwaway12357
How does WePay differ from Stripe?

And am I correct with assuming that WePay does money transfer using the bank
account number instead of the Visa/Mastercard card number? Related [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WePay#Occupy_Wall_Street](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WePay#Occupy_Wall_Street)

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ams6110
I was an early WePay user back when they offered an online invoicing service.
Was sad to see that go, but it was great while it lasted. Nice to see that
they are having success in their new orientation.

~~~
billclerico
Thanks for being an early customer. You can still use WePay to do online
invoicing through one of our partners like Freshbooks (WePay Clear, our
whitelabel product, powers Freshbooks Payments) or InvoiceASAP.

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JoelJacobson
Is WePay US-only card-only or do you support Europe and paying using your bank
account (=OBeP)? (Joel from Trustly here)

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netcan
It's really incredible that in 2015, we are still clunking around trying to
solve these basic problems of commerce.

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gargarplex
Maybe now you'll have better luck with that girl from Millionaire Matchmaker.
Best wishes.

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danoc
Congrats, Bill and Rich! Seeing the API's success makes me incredibly happy.

