Social payment service Buxfer has added peer to peer payments to its money management system. The payment system is supported through Amazon’s new Flexible Payments web service we reported on earlier. Buxfer is one of the first companies on the service’s private beta along with Jungle Disk, Freshbooks, and Beetlabs. Buxfer will be footing the bill for the 1-2% transaction fees till the end of August. They will also be rewarding users that add their friends to the service.
Buxfer, similar to Billmonk (sold to Obopay last year), lets you track and tag your expenses with friends and groups. Social payment sites like these aren’t meant to replace beefier accounting applications like Quicken or Wesabe, but rather easily track account balances with a heavy social networking component. You can either add you payments to Buxfer manually or import a payment statement from your bank, Quicken, or Microsoft Money. Having your payments on Buxfer lets you manage your balances with friends and analyze your expenses over time through pie charts and graphs. Since we last covered them, Buxfer has added a Facebook, mobile, and iPhone application.
The new payment system adds the option to “send a payment”. Sending a payment requires the email of Buxfer account you want to send the payment to and the amount. Submitting the transaction will take you to Amazon Payment’s site, which will handle the rest of the process. If the recipient has an Amazon account, the money will simply be deposited. Unfortunately, If they don’t have an account, Amazon will just pester you to get your friend on the service before the transaction can be completed.
A very cool idea. And thankfully they chose Amazon rather than PayPal, I think Amazon’s payment service seems very promising. Google Checkout could have been a good contender as well.
agreed…I look forward to the Amazon’s product. About time someone knocked Paypal and their criminal practices of stealing your money out from the top spot.
alex,
This is Shashank, one of the founders of Buxfer.
Paypal is always out of the picture when it comes to integration. I played around with the Paypal api a couple of months back … its not exactly the most fun stuff i did in life.
In the context of our application, what we want to do is to effect a money transfer between two of our customers. Buxfer’s bank balance is not affected at all in this transaction. This is very different from accepting a payment via Google checkout, or sending money via Paypal. To the best of my knowledge, Amazon is the first service which lets a third party legally transfer money between two of its customers, without having to worry about money laundering issues.
It’s a great fit for Buxfer, and I’m sure there will be many others making use of it very soon.
For those interested in tracking their expenses, check out Walletproof.com.
Shashank,
This is an excellent product overall and am disappointed that I waited so long to try it out. With the number of money management applications out there, it has been difficult to choose which one to use. Your interface is clean and easy to navigate, and I had no problems signing up using my gmail account. After recent issues with tracking apartment finances with my roommate, this service will certainly come in handy. As I use it more, I will be sure to provide more feedback.
Awesome usage! That’s a great example of the power of this thing.
Hopefully we’ll have our FPS integration going very soon, we’re almost finished up with it. Should be soon now, and we’re definitely looking forward to being on the cutting edge of something this big.
Shashank, feel free to get in touch with us at FreshBooks if you want to get in touch with a fellow pre-launch integrator. It’s nice to have everything out in the open now!
Michael,
I dont know you keep the tabs. You have already covered more than 1500 companies in Techcrunch. Its a great achievement.
Another great site that I’ve come across is Geezeo.com. It’s a very user-friendly site that allows you to add your bank accounts and easily track your expenses/income/loans and just about anything else you’d want to track! I was also recently watching CNN and they gave a great review of Geezeo too…be sure to check it out! -Chris
I’m not sure where I would use this. Does this mean I don’t have any friends?
excelent addition …
I am using this site past 2 months and kinda like it .. they are fast on acting on suggestion made by users
Absolutely awesome!
It was about time someone kicked PayPal out of the way!
Seriously! Buxfer not only keeps my tabs but now I can actually pay people.
That is so good. Earlier I needed to finally go to Bank of America or get money from ATM to pay friends or vice versa. Now its so good. For a measly few cents as a fee, I can get those settlements outta ma way! Cool job guys!
I HAVE PAID YOU MONEY, BUT HAVE HAD NO MERCHANT RECEIPT MAILING ENVELOPS FROM YOU. I AM ANXIOUS TO GET STARTED H E L P
THANKS, HUGH