The good news: they might be going away soon. The bad news: they may headed for your social media apps.
Data from Pew Research Center indicates more than 65 percent of Americans now use social networking sites, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau has suggested that 50 percent of Americans bank on their smartphones. But, until recently, these two worlds have been largely separate.
TippingCircle, a new social fundraising service, aims to change this by becoming the go-to product for Americans who want to collect money or payments through social networks. The underlying idea is simple: if you’re in need of financial assistance, you open a “tipping bucket” with Tipping Circle and distribute it through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.
But TippingCircle isn’t just aiming to become a payment portal for charities, though. Its goal is to corner the market on all small-scale payments by harnessing the power of social networks. Does your friend owe you for a night at the movies? If so, you can simply send a reminder to his social network.
Despite the potential applications for TippingCircle, it remains to be seen whether consumers will be comfortable with social payments. How is the company preparing to overcome this challenge and grow its user base?
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For these answers, we spoke to James Davis, founder of TippingCircle, to see how he believes his company will fit into the established electronic payments industry.
PYMNTS.com: This is the first time we’ve spoken with TippingCircle at PYMNTS.com, though we’ve written about the service before. Before we start the questions, would you introduce TippingCircle for those who may have missed our piece?
James Davis: TippingCircle is a social payment network that makes it simple and secure to pay your friends. The software service allows people to exchange money with friends for free at home or on the go, setup group payments for events and run fundraisers using tipping buckets.
TippingCircle enables people around the world to send tips (payments) in a fun social environment. Each user’s social tipping circle is established by connecting with friends through social networks to easily send and receive payments with them and anyone with an email address.
TippingCircle seems like it could catch on with charitable and nonprofit organizations. Are you looking to expand or partner with any soon?
Yes, just a couple months ago, TippingCircle partnered with a large and well-funded humanitarian organization. They have chosen TippingCircle to be their fundraising platform for helping people around the world in need. We are working on software integrations and this initiative will launch later this year.
As of now, TippingCircle is only partnered with PayPal for payments. Do you plan on expanding your available payment options in the future? Or integrating with other mobile wallet providers?
Our primary focus is to ensure that our users have the best experience possible when using our software. If there is a high demand for a different processor from our users, we would consider adding it as a secondary payment gateway. There are many reasons why we chose PayPal as our payment processor. Choosing a payment processor that best serves our users around the world was a critical decision. We spent months contacting, researching, comparing and testing many different global payment processors. PayPal’s security, reliability, global bank connections and robust eWallet features surpassed the other competitors and is the best payment processor that meets the needs of our users and our social wallet application.
We are in the process of offering prepaid Visa cards to users in countries where PayPal does not offer a full banking solution so they can access funds received from fundraisers anywhere in the world.
Money is a very sensitive subject to many people, and many don’t talk about it online. I’m interested, do you think that your service’s social notifications have a chance of changing this perception? What do you see as a healthy social conversation involving the exchange of money?
Yes, money is a sensitive subject. Dealing with cash and checks to pay a friend is bothersome for many people. I know it was for me before I built this service. TippingCircle is here to ease money exchanges between friends and make the world a better place with our social help network.
TippingCircle expands a user’s social network with a social payment profile that captures and shares the fun activities friends do together. When a tip is sent, the user can include a message about the event that draws attention to the fun time they spent together, as opposed to the money exchange itself. TippingCircle not only tracks and processes the payments,it also adds a social layer that makes it easier and less bothersome to handle money issues between friends.
Now that social payments are gaining traction, what’s next for TippingCircle? What are your plans to grow user engagement and enhance the product over the next six months?
We listen closely to feedback from our fantastic user base and we will continue improving our website and mobile applications by building new features and enhancing them continually.
We are also working with other players in the social media space, and other industries, where our social payment platform complements their software solutions. These partnerships have proven extremely effective at growing our user base and engaging users from various angles through third-party application integrations.
