Bitcoin provider IPayYou has developed a service that allows users to support their favorite campaigns and charities as well as share funds with friends and family, hoping to stay relevant as conversational commerce, social media purchasing and peer-to-peer payments all grow.

In a bid to stay a top contender in mobile payments and bitcoin wallets, IPayYou has released an option for users to share funds using Twitter handles. The new system allows a wider range of users to leverage IPayYou’s services to share payments with more peers.

“It has been always our goal to build iPayYou into the world’s easiest and most useful bitcoin wallet,” said Gene Kavner, founder and CEO of iPayYou. “Until now, bitcoin has been difficult to use by almost anyone not hugely involved in the development of bitcoin.

“The first step for iPayYou was to enable customers to use an email address as the primary way to send payments to one another, while still supporting all traditional bitcoin payment mechanisms,” he said. “Now, adding the ability to pay someone by simply knowing their Twitter handle is another step for iPayYou to expand on its ease of use.”

Peer-to-peer payments
Users will now be able to send payments to other consumers without the recipient needing an IPayYou account and only needing their Twitter handle. Twitter Pay makes it easier for a wide range of users to share money with friends, family and charities without needing extra information.

For instance, not all consumers are aware of their friends’ and family’s email addresses and other personal information needed to transact on IPayYou. However, IPayYou customers will now only need the recipient’s Twitter handle.

Individuals will also be able to support their favorite causes on IPayYou by only needing the official Twitter account name.

With so many methods of payments arising today in the mobile-centric industry, it is important for bitcoin providers such as IPayYou to continue to up the ante to appeal to modern consumers. Venmo and PayPal have pushed the boundaries for peer-to-peer payments by making it significantly easier to share funds, so bitcoin providers such as IPayYou need to push their innovations.

IPayYou is working on other mobile-enabled services that will launch later this year.

Mobile pay
Mastercard, which has thrown its hat into the ring of in-store mobile payments with Masterpass arrived at bricks-and-mortar locations such as BJs and Subway, hoping to become a leader by tacking on vending machine connectivity, Cake Pay integration, messaging purchases and banking partnerships (see more).

Also, nonprofits’ mobile giving programs got a boost as both Facebook and PayPal roll out new programs that make it easier for on-the-go millennials to donate to a charity (see more).

“Twitter is used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide and now iPayYou has introduced bitcoin to these users for them to benefit from this payment service without having to be familiar with the cryptocurrency or learn the cryptic bitcoin addresses,” Mr. Kavner said.