By Allan Maurer 
 
Twitpay, the company that emerged from a Startup Weekend in Atlanta in 2008, grabbed a good bit of national press when it launched, but changed direction last year when it’s original model did not work out.

Twitpay’s John Beisner sees green in social game space

Originally founded by Michael Ivey and Don Brown as a way to use microblogging service Twitter as a peer-to-peer payment service, last year it sold its assets to a group of investors led by payments industry exec Ashish Bahl and Morgan Keegan banker Keith Myers, who said they would invest up to $1 million more as the company relaunched  to help non-profits do fund raising over Twitter. While it acquired 44 non-profit clients, it is expanding now to process commercial transactions, initially for social gaming companies and the gift card market.
 
John Beisner, executive vice president for client services, who joined the firm last year, tells us, “The key here is the social side of the purchase – the value derived from users sharing their purchases with friends.” The idea is that seeing friends buy social gaming currency might inspire them to buy as well.
 
The company has partnered with Atlanta-based inComm, a prepaid and gift card payments processor to power its new direction.
 
Considering the expanded services, the company discussed changing its name – and may yet rebrand under its parent-company name of Social Media Pay, says Beisner. But it decided to stick with Twitpay for the time being, since the company has good name recognition.

Twitter itself could benefit from seeing its popular service with 200 million users turned to new uses, Beisner says. “If they continue to add features – something Facebook has done well – they give people more reasons to sign up and use the service.”
 
Twitter has advantages as a way to facilitate payments: it is already available on any mobile device, and there is a lot of buzz around the evolving mobile payments sector. Many Twitter users already access it on a mobile phone, he notes, so Beisner says the company sees potential there.

Twitpay is one of 50 innovative companies that presented at TechMedia‘s fifth annual Southeast Venture Conference March 2-3 at the Buckhead Ritz Carlton in Atlanta. TechMedia’s next Atlanta event is the Digital Summit, May 16 and 17 at the Cobb Galleria.
 
Beisner says the company’s model is “Continually innovate.” So, he adds, “As we talk to customers and figure out what their problems are, we try to create innovative solutions to add to the basic product.”
 
The company’s offices are nothing fancy, Beisner says, but its layout allows the firm’s five people to communicate with each other easily. “You stand up and say something and start exchanging ideas,” he says. “To innovate, you need a direct line to someone. If I’m talking to a client on the phone and mouth something (to those in the office), they may have an idea before I’m off the phone.”
 
Twitpay has learned a number of important lessons, Beisner says. “First, you can stay lightweight in a business and get a lot done without needing a lot of infrastructure or people.”
 
On the technology side, he says, “The cloud environment enabled us to develop a product quickly at low cost.”

The essence of these lessons, he says, is that “You can run a business with a lighter footprint and innovate quickly.”

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