Ribbon Courts Consumers by Launching P2P Payments Tool

Ribbon is extending its payments services beyond merchant acceptance to include person-to-person payments.

"This is an expansion of Ribbon into the consumer space. We built a merchant tool first that reaches hundreds of thousands of buyers; now we reach both parties with the Ribbon product," said Hany Rashwan, Ribbon's CEO, in an email to PaymentsSource.

Ribbon has been developing the P2P service for the past several months. To use the new service, users send an email, text, instant message or social media message with a personalized Ribbon URL ("ribbon.co/name"). The payer clicks this URL and then provides contact and payment information.

Ribbon developed the new service because its core offering was already being used in a similar manner, with users sending invoices to collect payments. Ribbon's service enables users to set up checkout pages on their websites or social network pages.

Ribbon is entering a competitive market for digital P2P payments. Square and Google have similarly added P2P functions to their product offerings after building a userbase of merchants. Square's Square Cash lets users send funds by copying Square on an email to the recipient, and Google enables a similar function in Gmail with an icon that lets users send funds as email attachments.