Video Interview With Memphis Startup Paytopia Making Payments Safer & Easier

by Kyle in Everywhere Else, Interviews, Memphis, Road Trip, SouthernB, Startups, Tennessee
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There are a lot of payment startups out there today. There are consolidated payment solutions and mobile payment solutions coming out of the woodwork. None of them though are focused on convenience and safety, the way that Memphis startup Paytopia is.

We originally met Mike Hoffmeyer CEO and founder of Paytopia a few weeks back at 48 Hour Launch in Memphis. Hoffmeyer, like many others in Memphis isn’t just a local founder and CEO but he regularly gives back to the local startup community by mentoring, helping with pitches and pitching in at events like 48 Hour Launch. In fact when we met with him at our office hours in Memphis we were talking about the the startups he is helping at ZeroTo510 a medical device and biotech incubator in Memphis.

Hoffmeyer, a graduate of the most recent class at Seed Hatchery, loves helping other startups and of course working on Paytopia.

Hoffmeyer spent most of his career in the payment business. He worked with credit card processing and ACH processing (direct debit and checking account payments).  Over the years he figured there had to be a better way then filling out these long, sometimes un-secure forms with all of your important information.  Hoffmeyer set out to develop a system that was both easier and faster. That system is Paytopia.


In a nutshell Paytopia works like this.

If you buy something at an online merchant that uses the Paytopia system you will only need your email address and Paytopia pin. From there the merchant will ping your bank via the Paytopia system.  Paytopia will send you a message with an authentication code for that transaction either in-app or SMS. You’ll then enter the authentication code into the transaction and voila, paid via your bank account.

Paytopia effectively takes a big bite out of payment fraud in the online environment by having a two step authentication system. The only way that a Paytopia customer could be defrauded was if the person committing the fraud had both the customers Paytopia pin and the authentication code delivered by app or SMS message. If someone tries to make a fraudulent Paytopia purchase the worst that can happen is the customer will get a bunch of text messages with authentication codes. Without that code, the fraudster can’t finish the transaction.

Check out more about this great new way to pay in the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about Paytopia here at Paytopia.com

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5 Angel List (Angel.co) Startups In Memphis

by Kyle in Angel.co, Everywhere Else, Memphis, SouthernB, Startups, Tennessee
Comments Off on 5 Angel List (Angel.co) Startups In Memphis 0 Like 1,914

Please don’t mistake me for an angel.co basher it’s a very useful tool. However, week in and week out we get an email from angel.co with the “trending startups” and they are almost always invariably from Silicon Valley and New York. That’s why we’ve developed this series to highlight angel.co startups from “everywhere else” it’s more of a compliment to angel.co rather than a bash. Oh and by the way it would be super cool if you followed Nibletz on angel.co

Today we’re taking a look at five angel.co listings form Memphis because it’s a big weekend for Memphis startups.

Seed Hatchery

First up is Seed Hatchery they’ve been an instrumental incubator and backer of the thriving startup scene in Memphis, they are also one of the sponsors for this weekends 48Hour Launch Memphis event.

Seed Hatchery was born out of venture capital firm Solidus Company in Nashville Tennessee. Solidus has invested over $112 million dollars in 48 companies over the last 24 years. According to Seed Hatchery’s website, the Solidus Company saw a gap in investment opportunities to stimulate growth in startups. They found that many companies needed a lot less money to start working on their ideas.

In December 2010, Vic Gatto of Solidus, Eric Matthews of Launch Memphis, and Gwin Scott established Seed Hatchery in Memphis to help “seed” growth of early stage startups.

Seed Hatchery held a Demo day last month for their most recent “class” of six startups that went through their incubator.

For more on SeedHatchery visit this site
For more on this weekend’s event in Memphis click here
Follow SeedHatchery on Angel.co here 

 

Friendsignia

Friendsignia is a very intuitive social dashboard that has a lot of people talking. SeedHatchery founder Vic Gatto said of the new social startup:

“They solve the biggest pain point in social media today… too much noise.”

Based on their description alone I’m waiting for my beta invite. What Friendsignia does is pulls social data from Facebook and Twitter and filters out meaningless updates from strangers. Friendsignia delivers the 150 people that matter most to you.

This is perfect for me as I have over 100,000 followers on Twitter and try and follow a good deal back (60,000) however I haven’t been able to look at my “home” timeline in over two years it’s way too noisy, so I use lists and streams from Hootsuite.  As their angel.co listing says “For a power user it’s a more efficient social dashboard”.

As with Gatto, for the professional it’s a better way to keep up with business contacts and associates who matter.

Now, not only is Friendsignia a new and more powerful social dashboard but they’ve got this really kick ass blog entry here to talk about what they do.

Find out more & request your beta invite here
Follow Friendsignia on angel.co here

PayTopia

PayTopia is a startup that promises a way to pay online without exposing your financial information. Sure this sounds a lot like PayPal, but so many people are burnt out on post E-Bay merger PayPal that they are jonesing for a new way of using their money online. PayPal complaints are up 70% post merger, with many longtime users switching away from PayPal because they no longer defend the “seller” in most transactions.

PayTopia has taken an innovative approach to paying online. Now your financial information and personal information is no longer at risk. PayTopia allows users to use their email addresses and a pin number to initiate payments.

Merchants submit payments to Paytopia, Paytopia texts the user with an authorization code and then the user gives the authorization code to the merchant to complete the payment.

In addition to providing user safety, it’s quicker than filling out an entire web based payment form.

Find out more about Paytopia here
Follow Paytopia on Angel.co here


StiQRd

I know that loyal readers of nibletz know how I feel about “loyalty and rewards” right about now. We called it right before SXSW that loyalty and rewards were going to replace group couponing and they have. However Memphis based Stiqurd (Stickered) has a couple points up their sleeves.

First off, StiQRd CEO Aaron Prather has a background in restaurants. Before StiQRd he owned his own restaurants. He felt a serious pain point with current loyalty offerings. You could go the cheap route with untraceable punch cards. Or you could spend thousands of dollars, which just isn’t in the margin of a restaurant, to do a swipe card.

StiQRd solves that problem by putting the loyalty and reward piece in the phone.

StiQRd is a QR code based reward and loyalty app for iPhone and Android. On the merchant side they offer a comprehensive dashboard to track visits, purchases and points for their most loyal customers.

As we’ve heard ever so often 15% of the top loyal customers can account for up to 50% of a restaurants revenue. With StiQRd everything is kept in one place, your phone.

StiQRd is currently leading the 1-99 employees category in the social madness competition in Memphis. Voting ends June 19th

Check out StiQRd here at their website
Download the Android app here at the Google Play Store
Check out the iOS app here in the iTunes store
Follow StiQRd on Angel.co 

 

Work For Pie

Work for Pie is a community for open source developers. They describe themselves as a bit like Klout (not sure why anyone would want to do that) and a bit like LinkedIn, but for open source developers.

The social community for open source developers allows developers to collaborate with each other and source each other for help with their projects. Users can also recommend and refer their fellow open source developers.

Their intuitive profile platform highlights not just their biography points but also their coding skills and work history. They also have a point based system based on recommendations and referrals so that if you’re looking for a certain type of developer you can find not just that type of developer but the best developers as well.

Last month Work For Pie closed on a $300,000 round of funding.

Check out Work For Pie on their website here
Follow them on angel.co here