WePay, a startup that’s meant to help take the pain out of managing payments for groups like fraternities and soccer teams, has landed a big new hire: Rasmus Lerdorf, the man who originally created the programming language PHP. Lerdorf, who left Yahoo last November, will be leading development of WePay’s API. The API will begin rolling out to a small number of developers this summer (you can ask to take part by emailing API@wepay.com ).
WePay’s platform is built to facilitate payments in group situations, where you often have to collect money from multiple people (as opposed to systems like PayPal where 1-to-1 transactions are more common). Founder Bill Clerico says that so far the service has gotten a lot of traction with fraternities, and is also catching on with roommates who regularly have to share bills. Since launching a month ago, Clerico says that the volume of transactions has been growing 50% each week.
WePay also recently launched a ticketing feature, which Clerico says is less formal than sites like Eventbrite. He says that the feature could be used by fraternities to sell tickets to their parties, or for clubs to sell tickets to special events.
WePay has a strong roster of investors, including Y Combinator, Max Levchin, Dave McClure, Paul Buchheit, Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Andrew McCollum, Joe Campanelli, and Angus Davis.
WePay makes it easy to collect and manage money online. Unlike competitors, WePay allows users to keep their group’s money in a dedicated account, and to share this account with their group. The service is great for roommates, clubs, organizations, fantasy leagues, teams, and much more. WePay was founded by Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman in Boston in 2008.
Rasmus Lerdorf is known for having gotten the PHP project off the ground in 1995 and has contributed to a number of other open source projects over the years. He was most recently an engineer at Yahoo!, where worked from 2002 to Nov. 2009. Prior to his work at Yahoo!, Rasmus worked at LinuxCare, IBM, and Bell Globis. Rasmus was born in Greenland, grew up in Denmark and Canada and has a Systems Design engineering degree from the...
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