TrialPay gets a $12.7 million cash call

22 02 2008

TrialPay gets a $12.7 million cash call

Posted by: in Small Business

Last year, I talked to the co-founder and CEO of TrialPay. I was certainly intrigued by his business model … and so are venture capitalists.

This week the company announced a $12.7 million round of capital. The investors include: Index Ventures, Atomico Ventures and former PayPal executives.

TrialPay has developed a new payments platform, based on its Offer-Matching Technology system. Essentially, the goal is to increase the chances of consumers buying a product (yes, that’s always something that’s interesting).

Here’s how it works: First, you can get a product for free. But, in exchange, you need to buy something from a vendor from TrialPay. There are more than 3,000 of them.

Thus, an advertiser acquires a new customer. Then, a vendor gets paid for a product (from the advertiser). And, more importantly, the consumer gets something for free.

No doubt, this is not simple to pull off. Basically, TrialPay had to spend lots of time developing a system to allow for the right kind of offers.

So far, though, it seems to be getting traction. TrialPay has 5.2 million registered users, with more than 15,000 new signups every day.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.