PruPay, a Denver-based payments technology company, has unveiled a collaboration with PayPal to develop and launch a simpler way for merchants to request one-time payments from consumers via text messaging.
While paying via text is already widely available from several providers, PruPay’s technology lab is seeking to enhance the offering with the addition of simple tools that help both merchants and consumers with their real-world problems.
The collaboration comes at a time when PruPay is waiving its normal fees to help small/medium businesses during the global pandemic.
Bill Sedgwick, PruPay CEO commented: “COVID-19 has instilled a legitimate fear of sharing or touching anything, both person to person and latently on devices such as keypads, so text payments make even more sense today than just weeks ago.
“We added security for merchants and optional add-on services like delivery fees, tipping, and a ‘Pay it Forward’ option that are not provided on native text-to-pay platforms.”
PruPay is offering its touchless payment service, a patent-pending technology, to merchants for free during this challenging time. Normally, there will be a nominal fee of 10 cents per transaction, which merchants can either absorb or pass along, but for the first 90 days after a new merchant signs up through July 31, PruPay is waiving all charges to provide a respite during the global pandemic.
Sedgwick added: “We wanted to offer consumers a turnkey way to support their favorite local merchants and provide merchants with a way to allow contributions without marking up their menu prices or adding additional fees if they don’t want to. When payments are processed, there will be a prompt for the customer to add an amount of their choice to support the business voluntarily.
“Not everyone can contribute, but we have learned that those who can are often very generous to the merchants that they want to help. It’s a goodwill gesture, versus a requirement, and people appreciate that.”
