PHP Founder Rasmus Lerdorf Joins Group Payments Startup WePay

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.