A Conversation With XipWire’s Sharif & Sibyl

If you follow the site, you’re probably familiar with XipWire, the text-to-pay service. We have used it for several donation drives here on the site, and we have nothing but great things to say about it.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with Sharif and Sibyl, the two folks behind the service, to chat with them a bit about XipWire. Enjoy.

What are some of your thoughts on mobile payment technology? I know other countries already use it, and it seems like the US is behind the times on taking advantage of this convenient technology.

Sibyl: That is pretty much one of my biggest selling points, is that the United States is one of the only countries that hasn’t adopted mobile text payments. People we approach are very surprised that for developing countries like India and Africa, this is second nature to them; this how they do everything.

We think it’s necessary as a nation, because of how addicted we are to our mobile phones, and what a culture of convenience we have become to adopt mobile payment technology.

Sharif: What you would think is the US would always be the technical innovator, and in a lot of ways we are… but not for mobile technology.  That is partly because of the competition we have when it comes to the carriers we have here. Most countries where you see a lot of that technical innovation there is usually one dominate player in the mobile market, and they kind of dictate what they are going to do, and provide.

Sibyl: We really see it as the way to pay and the next greatest thing. I think what encourages us the most is when someone tries it in front of us, or if we’re at Capogiro and I am using it; and someone is like, “ What did you just do?” That is my favorite question, because people get excited when they find out they can use a text message; something they already know how to do, to pay for things.  They already love their phone and now they have this great-added feature that is really just waiting for them to use.

Sharif: The other thing I think is interesting is really the evolution of mobile payments, because like all things in the world it evolved out of necessity, even when there was not infrastructure. The fact that they had the cell phone towers that came in early on, and people understood “I have this phone, I need to pay and I can sort of add the two together and make it happen.” It was necessity that allowed it to grow in these developing countries; where it’s convenience that I think will make it happen here.

Why did you decide to start XipWire up in Philadelphia?

Sibyl: We are based here, Sharif grew up closer to the city I grew up an hour and a half from the city in Border Town, Pennsylvania; but this was my city.

We know Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has always been great. It’s not an overwhelming city. It’s a cool city that you could walk in a day if you had to.

Sharif: I grew up in Drexel Hill, in the burbs. I went to school here and went to Penn.

I think Philadelphia is kind of ideal for a new payment technology. When you think about introducing a new form of payment you need consumers, people actually using the service, and businesses accepting it. Philadelphia is very accessible, I mean you can walk into a restaurant and talk to the chef/owner who is more than glad to give you his time to discuss new payment technology, and see the benefits of it.

We also have lots of great universities in the area and we see this as a technology that fits perfectly with them. They are prefect little ecosystems that have young tech savvy text happy students, that have a lot of immediate uses for XipWire.

Since Xipwire works both, for person to person, and consumer to business transactions it’s a perfect fit. From paying your friend back, to splitting a bill, to “hey mom, I need rent money”, that sort of thing; these are all ways you can use it immediately and it gives us a way to approach those businesses around campus.

Sibyl: The businesses have been so forthcoming with ideas that they think would make the service better, because nobody knows their business better; and what we want this service to do is enhance their business and add convenience.

What are some of the places that you have set up so far with XipWire?

Sybil: So Capogiro has it in all four of their locations; the Tierra Mia Organic Nail Spa, Affordable Skin Care and Mei Mei Restaurant are all using XipWire as well.

So, it’s interesting, the spas really like it because of the convenience factor. Because, when you go get your nails done, it’s annoying, because your nails are wet, so you can’t really move. But now, I can just go with my phone and punch in a couple things and you don’t have to worry. It might sound weird to your guys, but it actually is very annoying.

So is the technology flexible?

Sharif: Yes it is that flexible, and that’s kind of what makes it interesting. Because, when talking to businesses, the system appeals to different groups in different ways; for consumers, the thing they see right away is that person to person. Being able to pay your friend back after lunch, or something like that.

For the text to vote system, you are simply texting commands, and it’s just another command when you think about it; accessing the command and producing a result.  Yeah, we can really easily add that in there without interfering with the other parts of the system at all.

And then, when you think about the non-profit, their needs are totally different as well. The need to pledge, to donate; and what’s interesting about that, is that when you look at the other text to pledge systems out there, they are mostly carrier built, carrier based billing systems and there are so many things wrong with them.

In fact there are three major flaws with carrier based billing.  I would call them issues rather than flaws.  The first is that you are limited to $10 donations, just because the carriers are going to impose that limit.  Second, the carriers go through a middle man and your donation to the time that the nonprofit receives the money, is somewhere between 60-90 days.  That’s a significant period of time, when you are thinking about to raise money for this particular cause, and the urgency a bit. .  If I’m a XipWire user, the nonprofit instantly receives the money.

And then the third deficiency in the system is the fact there is no security.  I mean if I’m picking up your phone and texting Haiti to 90999 you would get charged for it.  We built XipWire on layers and layers of security, I just can’t pick up your phone and make a donation. The first thing that is going to happen is that it’s going to ask me for my pin, and it’s pin based security right there it’s going to at least prevent 50% of the people from actually getting through.

We felt that we were able to design and build the better system that serves the needs of the non-profit and to offer it to them at a cost that is a fraction of what’s currently out there.  That’s what makes us excited.

Dan:  How simple is it to sign up for XipWire?

Sybil: It’s a simple registration process, comparable to most registration process. It’s your name, birthday, all that stuff; and then you pick what you want to link to basically fund your XipWire account. You can use your bank account, your credit card or your debit account to fund it.