Press. Online payment company WePay helps little guys, goes after big ones (PayPal) Online payment startup WePay announced WePay Stores today, a new ecommerce solution for small businesses with zero tech prow.
It’s nearly impossible to describe WePay Stores without sounding like a commercial. It really is a simple solution for merchants without programming experience or technical ability. It takes a few minutes to start a store and you don’t need a merchant account. WePay handles payments, hosting and shopping cart. There are no set up fees, contracts or monthly fees. “Most merchants, including those that use PayPal, have to go figure out two different companies, one that offers payments and another that offers an online store,” says WePay CEO Bill Clerico (pictured far right).
The WePay Store also lets merchants embed a pre-designed store into an existing website or blog with one line of code. To see an example of a WePay store, check out StartupTees.com. PayPal is the Goliath of payment companies, and there are many Davids out there trying to bring it down. WePay Makes Opening an Online Store Simple & Embeddable. Online payment service WePay has unveiled a new merchant feature that makes it easier for small businesses to set up their own online stores.
The new WePay Stores aren't designed to replace more advanced ecommerce software solutions like Zencart or Magento. Instead, WePay Stores are best-suited for home business and small stores that only have, at most, a few dozen items to sell. WePay has streamlined the process of getting items onto the market. WePay Stores don't require a merchant account and the user doesn't need any programming knowledge to set it up. And because the system is powered by WePay, it doesn't have any setup fees — it takes its cut from the transactions. The feature that will definitely get the most attention though is embedding. One of the disadvantages of WePay Stores is that they lack the depth of customization options. The WePay Stores are part of the company's broader strategy to be simpler and easier to use than its biggest competitor, PayPal.
WePay Launches WePay Stores, Taking On PayPal - Tomio Geron - Social Markets. WePay Launches WePay Stores For Easy, Embeddable Storefronts. Back in March 2010, WePay launched to the public as a group-payments platform — one that makes it easy to coordinate things like fraternity dues and bills that you share with your roommates.
They’ve since expanded to offer event ticketing and support for donations, and today they’re launching a feature that puts it in even more direct competition with PayPal: WePay Stores. The feature lets any site integrate a storefront by inserting an embed code (sites can tweak the appearance of their new storefront using CSS). No merchant account is required to set up a store — you’ll just need a WePay account. You can see an example of a store at Startuptees, which has been using it for the last week. As for solutions like Shopify, Clerico says there are typically monthly fees involved with the storefront, in addition to payment processing fees. Other alternatives to WePay include Etsy and Weebly, both of which let you set up a storefront without having to know how to actually build a webpage.