Micropayment services, and especially those which allow readers to tip bloggers, are a dime a dozen these days, but TipIt is the first one I’ve seen that allows PayPal tips to be sent via microblogging service Twitter.
TipIt’s core service is fairly straightfoward: you put a ‘tip jar’ link on your website; your supporters can tip you tiny or less-tiny amounts of money; when their total tips reach £2/€3/$4, they’re told to pay by PayPal; assuming that they do pay, TipIt take a percentage for processing fees (currently just over 5%), and you get your share of the rest. According to the company, around 70% of tippers make good on their promises: you wouldn’t want to rely on it to pay the mortgage, but it might cover your webhosting.
But TipIt also offers the ability to transfer money via Twitter. Just tweet “d tipit @TARGET AMOUNT MESSAGE”, and you’re back in the same “email to remind you to PayPal” loop. It’s not perfect, far from it, and I’m betting it will be just the first of many such providers, but it has enormous potential.
Via TechCrunch.
