PayLeap Attempts To Woo Startups With New Payment Referral Kickback

If you are in the business of needing to process shopping for your ecommerce startup then this is going to be of interest. If not, look away now.

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York the startup PayLeap, which is a payment platform for ecommerce, is reaching out with a new program to help fund the development of applications connecting to their payment gateway platform.

Whether it’s marketing spiel or not, PayLeap claims to have “set aside” $1 million in funding to cover developers upfront, as well as a residual stream back from referred businesses that have active payments with the company.

Here’s how it works: A lot of web and app developers refer their customers to some of the larger payment gateway companies, but they don’t get anything back for doing so. PayLeap program (P4) plans to collects these ongoing residuals through a referral relationship. That means the merchant, the partner, and of course PayLeap benefits.

PayLeap is going up against Authorize.net and Auth.net (a legacy gateway that’s been around a long time). The problem is the developers don’t get anything back for those referrals. PayPal, Google Checkout, Stripe and Square are also competitive but often involve additional fees.

P4 is supposed to help offset the development costs associated with certifying through PayLeap’s APIs and help cover co-marketing and promotional costs.

This could be useful for startups which need to handle electronic payments like credit, debit, check/ACH, gift card, and EBT because its connected to global payment processing platforms including First Data, TSYS and Paymentech.

Of course, it’s not just commerce, but could apply to mobile, healthcare, bill presentment, inventory management systems, and pretty much anywhere electronic payments are needed, according to Rod Katzfey, COO.

As they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice…