GoDaddy’s Get Paid Integrates Invoicing and Other Business Tools With Payments

Online domain company GoDaddy’s new Get Paid service combines payment acceptance for small businesses from up to three payment companies with invoicing and expense-management capabilities. That caters to demands from merchants wanting more than payment processing, says one industry analyst.

Get Paid draws its payment data from PayPal, Stripe, and Dwolla. Merchants must have an account with at least one of these companies to use Get Paid, but they do not need to be existing GoDaddy customers.

Merchants can accept payments in-person via a mobile device and online. PayPal provides a card reader for use with smart phones.

GoDaddy charges $47.88 for 12 months of its Starter tier, which includes payment integration and a payments page and Web address that matches the domain name. The Essentials tier, at $95.88 for 12 months, includes expense billing to clients, weekly sales and expense summaries, and automatic import of expenses from credit cards, banks, and PayPal. The Premium service, at $179.88 for 12 months, adds recurring invoice capability and the ability to track billable and non-billable time.

“The product is simple,” says Steven Aldrich, senior vice president of applications at Scottsdale, Ariz.-based GoDaddy. “It’s helping small business accept payments.” Specifically, GoDaddy is targeting service-oriented small businesses.

GoDaddy says it has 12 million customers and 57 million domains under management. Get Paid is meant to help small businesses with more powerful payment-management tools that otherwise cost too much, Aldrich says. “Instead of us being a payment processor, we create the experience that puts the pieces together,” he says. “We’re focused on the service-based business for whom there hasn’t been much of a toolkit for automation on invoicing and automation on payment processing.”

The ability to create and track invoices should help small businesses better understand their cash flows, Aldrich says.

Although there is no cap on how large a business can be to use Get Paid, Aldrich says the primary mission of the service is to help small firms start, run, and grow their businesses.

The combination of payments with business-management tools can be powerful, says Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group, a payments consulting firm, and one payment companies should strive to emulate.

“Clearly, they feel their customers building Web sites need a way to manage their small businesses,” Ablowitz says, relying on software-as-a-service models to deliver them. “It’s a really good horizontal application because so many businesses can take care of invoicing.” It’s a relatively straightforward service to offer, he adds.

Offering services in conjunction with payment processing is a well-known tactic to enticing and retaining merchants, and demonstrates that “it’s not just about payments anymore,” Ablowitz says. “The value is in the capabilities, and payment is the secondary concern. If you’re an acquirer, processor, or independent sales organization, you should be thinking about what you’re doing with services.”