TextPayMe Update at Payment News

"TextPayMe CEO Phil Yuen emailed me today with some updates on his recently launched mobile payments startup.

Here are the highlights from Phil's email:

"Definitely, we were a little distracted the past 2 weeks in looking for investors and partners. We are now ready for the next wave and are working on a few exciting features/enhancements to make the service even better! We have also added an advisor.

• Support for short codes are launching this week. TextPayMe users (with the exception of Verizon Wireless customers) can now text their commands to 70820 instead of the clumsy email address - sms@textpayme.com. This will greatly improve our user experience and was one of the most frequently asked for features.
• Increased marketing around Craigslist uses. This is where we think our service can thrive - local face to face transactions. Cash is inconvenient, nobody accepts checks, but it'll be perfect if they can use their cellphones and TextPayMe to complete those transactions.
• We are launching a new promotion - Beta Users have 0 fees for life. So anybody who signs up now will be charged no transactions fees for life.
• Added support for online merchants. We noticed there have been some websites using our service for payments or solicitation for donations. We are adding support for merchants to be notified electronically if they received a payment so that they can process the order.
• Brand new site design. We have a new spiffier front page that will better explain to users our service and also talks about the short code. We have made it easier for users to understand what our service is about and when they can use it. We are also rolling out a new help section soon.
• Paul Graham and his team at Y-Combinator are now involved with TextPayMe and are giving invaluable advice to us. More information can be found at http://ycombinator.com/ and http://www.paulgraham.com/

You can continue to follow this team's efforts on the TextPayMe blog where they write regularly about how the last couple of weeks have been crazy with meetings and conference calls with potential investors, advisors, etc. "