My Experience with WePay
Recently, on twitter, I read someone’s tweet about WePay.com. This name was totally new for me, so I checked their website (wepay.com), their fee structure and it was impressive.
From their FAQ section, it appeared that one need to have US address and US bank account to start using this service. So far, these were their only 2 requirements. Still to be sure, I opened a ticket at WePay’s support portal to confirm this, my question was answered affirmatively, that this service can be used if I have a valid US address and verified bank account, even if I am not US citizen or not living in US at the moment.
Well, that was a good news for me. I am not living in US but I have many friends/relatives there. So I could use this service as I have US address and bank account too.
I signed up at WePay, it was so simple and quick. Then I added and verified my bank account. That was quick process too. Now it was the time to test their service, how it works, how quick it is and all that. So I asked one of my friend to make a small donation just for testing purpose.
Now here comes the twist. According to them, payment made with Credit Card are approved in few hours and payment made with bank account can take upto 1-2 days to clear. My friend had made the test donation using credit card, so I was expecting it to clear in few hours.
Almost after 24 hours, my transaction was still pending. I opened ticket in support system, I received no response regarding this. Then after 36 hours (of payment), I contacted WePay’s live chat support (Yeah, they have live chat support too, which is impressive factor again!!). Live support person had no clue why it was still pending. That person asked me to contact another person from their support team. I contacted him, and I was asked to call him regarding this payment. Later I called this person, he asked me who is the sender of this payment n all that (which I might not be knowing if it was not a test payment, being a donation). I answered his questions and then I was told that I can’t use this service as I am not living in US.
On one side their support staff confirms that I can use their service as far as I have US address and US bank account, I can use this service, even though I am not living in US and other side, after I finish all verification, I am being told that I can’t use this service. This is not professional. All the support person should know all the rules OR they should not answer my question. Any reply from support representative is considered as official, and such huge difference in two support person’s view is not professional.
One more thing I found is, their system/website is not fully tested, specially in terms of cross-browser JS issues. As WePay’s interface depends on Javascript, some of the operations were not working in some browser, which was later fixed when I reported bug.
I have had little email conversation with Bill (co-founder of WePay), turnaround time from this person was quick, must appreciate that.
Things I liked about WePay:
- Good new venture by young entrepreneurs
- Quickly fixes bug
- Simple and easy interface
Things I don’t like at all about WePay:
- It seems they are not sure what they want to allow 😉
- It’s not acceptable when payment processing system has BUGS in public release period
- They don’t even feel like writing 2 kind words when someone reports bug in their system. They fix it, but with no response.
- Support staff has inadequate knowledge about their own rules