10 ms·
WePay's (YC S09) next chapter
- umeshunni 9y agotl;dr - Their Incredible Journey (TM) ends at Chase
- dweekly 9y agohttps://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
- dguaraglia 9y agoROFL, this reminds me of Google Fiber's infamous "Advancing Our Amazing Bet" blog post, which was essentially an announcement that they were giving up on actually advancing the amazing bet. It became a running joke internally (at Alphabet) for a while.
- aberman 9y agoI hope not.
- pbreit 9y ago“WePay and its employees will operate as Chase's payments innovation incubator in Silicon Valley" Uh, oh. Does such a thing ever work?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kevmo 9y agoFor a while. All the big companies have external innovation acquisition as a yearly budget item.
- oh-kumudo 9y agoChase App is top-notch, not some random corporate bloatware, really easy to use. I feel they are pretty competitive.
- csours 9y agoThe current wisdom is that if you leave yourself weak to disruptive innovation. In the automotive world, everyone has a bet on self driving cars, for instance. Ford has Argo AI, GM has Cruise Automation. For a contrast, look at Kodak. They pioneered the tech for digital camera sensors... and then did nothing with it, because they made money on film. Digital camera sensors killed film. If you want a longer discussion on this, The Innovator's Dilemma is highly recommended. Here's a short summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUAtIQDllo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUAtIQDllo8
- cookiecaper 9y agoFor what it's worth, Chase has quickly been becoming the most consumer-focused and technically-capable financial institution that I routinely interact with. They may have someone competent in the leadership over there, and I find acquisition of WePay another potential positive indicator of that.
- nedwin 9y agoPumped for these guys. I had a few different interactions with them in very small capacities over the years and they were always humble, genuine and supportive of the different projects/businesses. Just nice, smart, unpretentious guys. Congrats.
- mandeepj 9y ago"most respected financial institutions: JPMorgan Chase & Co" You would say that now
- JoshTriplett 9y agoChase just finished switching their "Quick Pay" infrastructure over to "Zelle", and now they're buying WePay. I wonder what they intend to do with it?
- philip1209 9y agoAs I recall, they were good at detecting fraud in marketplaces. After a certain point, payments is all about fraud management.
- jdmichal 9y agoChase QuickPay has always been Zelle. Or, more accurately, QuickPay was Chase's branding of the clearXchange system, which has been rebranded everywhere as Zelle. Also, Zelle and WePay are in two completely different spaces. Zelle is consumer-to-consumer money transfer. WePay is a merchant payment processor.
- kevinr 9y agoZelle is not really the same thing as what WePay does. Zelle is peer-to-peer payments, competitive with Paypal, Square Cash, Venmo, etc. (P2P is a term of art in the industry; it's not P2P in the Bittorrent sense. :) WePay is about providing payments infrastructure to marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms (Lyft, GoFundMe, etc.). WePay are competitive with Stripe's Connect product (disclaimer: my employer). Braintree and Adyen also have similar products. Congrats to the WePay folks. I hope this new chapter works out well for them!
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoZelle is more than that: Zelle is a new interbank network for free and instant money transfers that avoids the Federal Reserve ACH system that PayPal, SquareCash, etc use which takes 24-36 business hours for money to move. I'm surprised that Zelle is moving so slowly - it's a great selling point for a bank/CU. Alas, the system doesn't allow for non-personal payments, so the banks want to preserve their commercial payments processing income.
- 9y ago
- willow9886 9y agoMore consolidation in the age of corporate monopoly... I'm sure a nice exit for the founders and their investors.
- craigkerstiens 9y agoThis is a pretty authentic and fairly clear note from an acquisition. It's pretty clear it wasn't the home run that so many set out for when founding a company. I do expect this is a good landing out of this for many, yet now there are new challenges to navigate. Nine years is no short time to labor through, especially when you're taking a giant risk and giving up things that software engineers could easily get in terms of work/life balance at an AWS/Google/Microsoft. Yet, you set out to change something in a noticeable fashion. I truly hope Chase gives you the chance to do that, yes it's a big company. But, in the spectrum of big co's in the financial space they seem more open to innovation than so many others so... best of luck with what's next at Chase.
- tommynicholas 9y agoSources say it's north of a $220m acquisition - I mean I know that's not a home run but I'm also pretty certain it's not a nothing outcome at all.
- craigkerstiens 9y agoThat is a solid outcome, but with nearly 80m (publicly) raised, likely not a giant return based on those numbers and length of company existing. Some may have done quite well, but plenty of unclear details. There are many notable home-runs for all players involved, FB, Whatsapp, etc, but those are often the exception. This isn't to say it's a bad acquisition or should be dismissed as a failure. It just re-iterates that it's not all easy, glory, and success. I do hope for the team involved it worked out just as they'd hoped, but from their post it feels like many hard years and more of a next chapter than the end. Best of luck to them all in the future.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- austenallred 9y agoA $220m+ acquisition is absolutely a home run, and likely a win for all involved, even with $80m raised. FB and WhatsApp are once-in-a-decade type returns. In baseball parlance perhaps a World Series winning grand slam or a perfect game. You needn’t exit for $19B for it to be a great outcome.
- propman 9y agoCongrats, well deserved.
- cmer 9y agoI had breakfast with Bill a few years ago in Palo Alto. It was clear pretty quickly that WePay wasn’t a good fit for us, but he still managed to navigate me through the competitive landscape and helped me figure out which product was right, pitfalls to avoid, regulations, etc. He even offered his help for the future, even though we were giving him zero business. I’m writing all this because I left with the feeling that he was a genuinely great guy and that he deserved success. I’m glad it has finally come his way! Best of luck! PS: stay away from bitcoin.
- joering2 9y agoProbably like many others, in the first part of 2012 I invested about $10k in some bitcoins that I still continue to keep untouched today. Tell me once again what should I stay away from??
- pls2halp 9y agoHave fun with the hard fork.
- cookiecaper 9y agoPlease cash in at least some of that; it's too sad to think of a conventional amateur investor approach of "always hold out for more" wiping out that potential fortune. Take your 5000x gain and be happy with that phenomenal performance instead of being concerned about the infinite "I could've gotten more if I just sold on Magic Date X". A materialized gain that you can actually use is more valuable than a paper gain that may not be there when you need it, especially in an instrument as volatile and immature as Bitcoin.
- joering2 9y agoI appreciate your concern. I am keeping them not for more gains, but to pass it on to my child eventually, although I believe single bitcoin will end up costing north of $25,000 since #1 there is only limited number being eventually in "circulation", #2 you can safely use 0.0001 bitcoin to process transaction worth $5.
- mbesto 9y agoThis is really interesting, because if I understood it correctly, WePay was basically a layer that sat on top of Vantiv's PayFac and made it easier for businesses (SaaS) to take payments on behalf of many merchants. In other words, let's say you setup a SaaS called "GymSAAS" that billed monthly fees (and took cut of each transaction) and your client was "Globo Gym" . GymSAAS could use WePay to collect the money for Globo Gym, take a cut and then pay Globo Gym every month the remaining amount. Using Vantiv's PayFac, it means you skip the tedious process of assigning a new merchant account for Globo Gym as they get underwritten in the industry of "gyms". So what does this mean for Chase? Do they gut all of the plumbing out with Vantiv and move it over to Paymentec for processing? Does Paymentec even have a PayFac capability built into it?
- whitegoodman 9y agoGreat question. I'm curious about this, too. My impression from the way they described what it will become ("WePay and its employees will operate as Chase's payments innovation incubator in Silicon Valley") really makes it sound more like an acquihire or something.
- joering2 9y agoNo its not. What you describing is called "collusion fraud" and if caught it can land you/your company on MATCH list.
- ianhawes 9y agoNo, you're wrong. Collusion fraud is (generally) when a merchant uses stolen credit cards to process payments then absconds with the money before the customer disputes the charge. What the parent is describing is PayFac (payment facilitator) which is where the card network and acquirer are aware of the merchant/sub-merchant relationship. You can determine if a payment is through PayFac by the tell-tale asterisk after the first 2 characters on the statement descriptor. For example, Square transactions process as "SQ*[Merchant Name]"
- joering2 9y ago
- joering2 9y agoCongratulation to Bill, Rich, Mark and Tina! I'm sure everyone else involved deserved this success as well.
- Animats 9y agoCongratulations on exiting.
- 100k 9y agoCongrats Bill and Rich, and good luck at Chase.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- latchkey 9y agoEarly WePay customer. Implementor of a Java WePay API. Huge congrats to the team! One feature that stood out for me was the ability to issue refunds without fees. It was not common a few years ago. This allowed me to build an event ticketing platform where promoters could sell tickets. If an event is cancelled and we had already paid out funds to the promoter, my business could have been 'on the line' for the refunds. Even though we were never a huge customer, the business didn't succeed, they still always treated us like we were important. This was a stark contrast to PayPal, whom they were originally trying to take down. I suspect this merger is also about their fraud detection system. I hope Chase can put it to good use, they need it.
- erikb 9y agoThe enterprisiest announcement I've read in a long time. And I work at a big corp. Wouldn't be surprised if many people who read this actually don't even understand that it basically says "hi guys, we got bought." It's also hard to figure out what WePay has actually been doing. Great enterprise speak again. So, that's what the banking world looks like? Even more enterprisy than the Enterprise despite being a start-up?
- gk1 9y agoI thought it was fairly clear. Chase wants to get into the fintech space so they acquired WePay.
- roymurdock 9y agoIs there a a good definition for companies in the "fintech" space? Is it anyone building a product that lets consumers/enterprises receive and send payments over mobile/desktop/internet rather than physically going into a branch? Curious as it seems to me (uninformed) that basically all banks already have fintech offerings and are built around networking and payments technology at their core.
- toastking 9y agoI think fintech (like "edtech") is a little bit nebulous. I would say anything involving handling money is fintech. So stuff like Venmo or Robinhood. I would even go so far as to say certain data science companies are fintech in that their offerings cater to financial institutions.
- erikb 9y agoYeah but it is written indirectly, and the only reason why it's clear to you is because you are probably trained (willingly or not) to interpret such announcements. Between my quote "hi guys, we've been bought" and this statement, you can see the difference, right? One is very clear to the point, the other talks about lot of things but actually doesn't literally spell it out once.
- 9y ago
- aytekin 9y agoCongratulations to the WePay team! As a partner(At JotForm, we integrate forms with WePay), we are excited to hear that Chase is planning to grow WePay.
- sanj 9y agoI met Bill and Rich a decade ago in the Andala Coffee House in Cambridge. They were kind, warm, quick with a joke, and even quicker to offer support, insight, and help to the fledgling group of young entrepreneurs. I've taken vicarious delight from watching their success!
- wdr1 9y agoA bit of trivia: Chase was founded by Aaron Burr.