Ingk Labs, an IP accelerator in New York City, has purchased payment platform ORCA Inc. and will use it to power a new PayPal competitor called Payz. ORCA, formerly known as OneTXT, was backed by Metamorphic Ventures, KPG Ventures and individual investors Geoff Judge, Roger Ehrenberg, and John Frankel. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
ORCA, also based in New York, was a social media payment platform that helped facilitate transactions on social networks and online games. Ingk Labs will now take possession of ORCA’s IP and other assets and will use them as the basis for Payz, a comprehensive payment, loyalty and analytics platform that will include support for gift cards. Payz’ promise is to make taking payments dead simple while providing deep customer analytics and services like gift cards and rewards to improve customer relationships and decrease abandoned shopping carts.
Payz offers a lightweight API that lets merchants without a merchant account or payment gateway create a single unified commerce system. More established retailers can wrap Payz’s service around their existing payment system including PayPal. Merchants can build their own payment experience, brand it themselves, keep transactions onsite and encourage more loyalty through gift cards. The goal is to help merchants better convert sales by taking a very consumer-centric approach to payments.
“We feel the industry is in need of a makeover,” said Craig Alberino, CEO and founding partner at Ingk Labs. “E-commerce has de-coupled payments from customer service and commoditized payments. But our customers tell us $87 billion is left in e-commerce because of abandoned shopping carts. We’re trying to help our customers find new revenue.”
