Philly text-payment startup to make history at Rittenhouse Row Festival

Mobile payment that utilizes text messaging presents the classic chicken-or-the-egg issue for Philadelphia-based startup XIPWIRE. The company has built plenty of buzz through strategic partnerships and marketing with potential merchants and users and showcasing its platform’s ability to transform how non-profits solicit donations.

But until there are enough merchants that accept payment via XIPWIRE, and until there are enough shoppers comfortable enough with text payments signed up, it’s hard for the young company to truly demonstrate its potential impact.

That will change on May 1, when XIPWIRE makes history of sorts at the annual Rittenhouse Row Festival, an annual upscale street fair featuring some of the finest retailers and restaurants in Center City. The company is sponsoring the festival and training what they hope will be dozens of merchants to use XIPWIRE to accept text payments from the expected crowd of 50,000.

“We’re going to hatch that egg,” says company founder and president Sharif Alexandre. “This is an opportunity to finally break though and give it enough of an opportunity to prove itself.”

XIPWIRE has attracted attention of area merchants because it charges a fraction of transaction fees levied by credit card processing providers. The company has also fine-tuned its platform in recent months, making “xipping” a two-step process that most anyone who can send and receive a text can complete.

That could go a long way in making May 1 the largest mobile payment event in the U.S.

“We believe once people start using it, they’ll continue to use it,” says Alexandre.

Source: Sharif Alexandre, XIPWIRE
Writer: Joe Petrucci