TipUp.me Lets You Top Up Your ChangeTip Account Using Credit and Debit Cards

Published at: Jan. 27, 2015

TipUp.me, a new service allowing users to top-up their ChangeTip accounts using credit or debit card, is surfing on the popular tipping movement to boost mainstream adoption.

Launched in February 2014, ChangeTip is a low-friction micropayment infrastructure for the Internet that allows users to send bitcoins and fiat currencies via popular social media, including Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus, Tumblr, StockTwit, Reddit or GitHub, and most recently Facebook and Slack.

Aiming to become the "love button for the Internet" by allowing users to easily send "feeless micro-donations to content creators," ChangeTip went viral in early November 2014, notably on Reddit, where users started giveaway threads, attracting newbies to the /r/Bitcoin community.

It is following ChangeTip's tremendous success that Will Binns, a former maintainer of Bitcoin.org and Bitcoin.com, who also worked as a product manager at Blockchain.info, started thinking about a tool that would make the tipping process even easier:

"One of the biggest things I've looked for is a super practical and helpful utilization of the technology that will fluidly lead more people into adopting it," TipUp.me founder Will Binns told Cointelegraph.

Prior to TipUp.me, ChangeTip users had to have a Bitcoin address, or sign up to a Bitcoin exchange to fund their wallet, and then their ChangeTip account. By acting as an independent operator, TipUp.me streamlines this process by allowing people to refill their ChangeTip account using either a credit or debit card.

"We felt that this was too many steps and a potentially complex barrier to entry for many new users to navigate, especially those who do not know anything about Bitcoin," Binns told NewsBTC in an interview. "We built TipUp.me to solve this problem and make this process as easy as possible."

"We want to make it as easy as possible for new users to start tipping their friends, family and others using ChangeTip - we think credit and debit cards are the key."

Users top-up their ChangeTip account with a major credit or debit card by purchasing a prepaid card, or what TipUp.me calls a "Tip-Up," amounting of US$10, US$25 or US$50. The amount is automatically sent to the user's ChangeTip account, where it becomes immediately spendable.

For each Tip-Up, the startup charges a US$1 processing fee, "mainly to cover bank fees on its side for taking credit cards," noted Binns.

Binns further added that TipUp.me was currently working closely "to navigate regulatory and compliance hurdles in various jurisdictions," as the company is opened "to very specific requirements in order to maintain solid relationships with credit card processors."

TipUp.me is currently running under beta version, and is said to launch to the public in the coming weeks. Those interested in testing the service can request an invite.

[Full disclosure: The Editor in Chief and CEO of Cointelegraph, Toni Lane Casserly, is an advisor at ChangeTip. In the interest of avoiding any perceived conflicts of interest, the reporting and editing of this story was done independently.]

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