GoDaddy Joins With Microsoft to Enable Payments During Meetings on Teams

Businesses were quick to adopt online chat platforms as a handy meeting tool during the pandemic, and now payments providers are starting to target the services as a new venue for transactions. One of the first is GoDaddy Inc., which on Monday announced it is working with Microsoft Corp. to let small businesses accept payments during Microsoft Teams meetings with customers.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based Web registrar, which in recent years has moved steadily into processing digital payments, said it is one of three companies Microsoft has chosen for the new service, which in GoDaddy’s case will integrate its payments capabilities with chats and meetings held on the Teams platform. That will allow businesses to be paid “in the moment,” GoDaddy says, while a transaction is being discussed.

To use the service, which GoDaddy says will become available in “the coming weeks,” sellers will use a new Payments app from Microsoft and synchronize their GoDaddy Payments account with the Teams platform. Payments will work on both desktop and mobile technology, GoDaddy says.

Teams, along with a list of competing online meeting platforms, took off during the pandemic as in-person commerce became too risky. Teams is one of the three most popular platforms worldwide, along with Zoom and Google Meet, according to numbers compiled by emailtooltester.com.

The move into payments for online meetings follows by weeks other steps GoDaddy has taken to deepen its presence in payments processing. Indeed, GoDaddy has steadily added payments services since its acquisition in early 2021 of Poynt Inc., a technology company whose product line included a set of advanced point-of-sale devices. Its mainline services, typically aimed at very small sellers, include assistance in building and registering Web sites.

Early in March, GoDaddy enlisted the big processor Worldpay to offer transaction services to small and micro merchants for both online and in-person payments. The service, called Commerce 360, includes transactions through social media and online marketplaces. In February, FIS announced its intention to sell Worldpay.

Other recent moves into payments by GoDaddy include the addition last month of Tap to Pay for iPhone capability and, in February, the launch of Payable Domains, which lets businesses accept payments through a registered domain name.

“We’ve been busy building out our commerce platform to enable small businesses to accept payments anywhere, so this expansion to Teams meetings is a natural extension of that,” said the president of GoDaddy Commerce, Osama Bedier, in a statement. Bedier, who was the founder of Poynt, came to GoDaddy as a result of that acquisition.