Almost exactly one year ago (their birthday is tomorrow), WePay launched its group payment platform to the public. The goal was simple: give people an easy way to divvy up bills, member dues, and other common transactions with an integrated payment system and easy reminders to nudge those fraternity members who haven’t paid their dues yet. The service is also handy for selling tickets and collecting donations.
In light of the occasion, WePay is starting to talk about some of its numbers (albeit vaguely). WePay CEO Bill Clerico says that in the last three months, the service’s engagement numbers have surged from around 5,000 users per week to 25,000 per week. These users aren’t just visiting the site — they’re actually taking substantive action, like sending bills. He attributes this growth to optimizations the site has recently made to its sharing flows on Twitter, Facebook and its emails. He also says that WePay has drawn a lot of new users from referrals.
As for the amount of money WePay is actually dealing with, Clerico says that it is currently seeing “several million dollars” in payment volume per month. Obviously WePay only takes a small fee for each transaction (3.5%, with a 50 cent charge to pay with your bank account), so WePay isn’t seeing millions in revenue. But Clerico says that revenue is up 70% month over month. He declined to get much more specific, explaining that he didn’t want to draw apples-to-oranges comparisons with other payment platforms that have different fee structures.
In light of the growth, the company is hiring — a lot. Clerico says they’ll be hiring 25 people in the next 90 days, which will be enabled by the $7.5 million they raised last summer.