Early this morning, we moved Blinkpay out of beta testing, and it is now available for everyone. Hurray!

To get familiar with Blinkpay, log into your account and click the “Blinkpay” tab. The page has a lot of good information as well as a button for you to sign up.

If you are not a Blinksale customer, you can see the same Blinkpay information page on our website.

What is Blinkpay?

If you’ve been following along on the blog, you know the basics: Blinkpay is an add-on service for your Blinksale account that allows your clients to pay invoices with a credit card. Blinkpay adds a payment link to your invoices that, when clicked, brings your client to a payment page. They enter their payment details and make the payment. That’s it. You get paid, a notification appears on your dashboard, and–assuming the client pays in full–the invoice is marked as Closed. Boom. Done.

Watch this screencast to see it in action:

This 2 minute video provides a look at how easy it is to do online invoicing with Blinksale and the new Blinkpay add-on for credit card processing.

With most other online invoicing apps, you have to have an external gateway account (like authorize.net) and a merchant account (both typically bear additional fees).

With Blinkpay that is built right in. No additional accounts needed.

Turning on Blinkpay

Due to the intricacies of the credit card processing industry, Blinkpay is currently only available to U.S. customers. This means your address is in the United States, you are doing business in U.S. dollars and you are depositing into a U.S. bank. Naturally, we want to extend the service to all of our customers worldwide and will continue to work towards that goal.

There is no charge to apply. You do not need to have anything but a good financial history and a bank account. Blinkpay IS your merchant account. You can collect as much money as you want through it. No limits.

Once subscribed & activated, Blinkpay is $20 a month to accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover, and $5 extra to accept American Express. In addition, each transaction (payment) carries a small fee. See the Rates section on the Blinkpay page for more info. All in all, Blinkpay rates have been trimmed down to be some of the lowest in the industry.

We even estimate your fees for an invoice when you’re ready to send it so you can make informed decisions about what fees you want to take on:

To get Blinkpay turned on for your account, click the “Sign Up” button on your account’s Blinkpay tab. This will lead you the Blinkpay application, which is easily the most straightforward, clearest and simplest way to get set up as a credit card merchant. Since you are getting paid with credit cards, there is a certain amount of personal, business and financial information that is required–by law–to qualify, so be prepared to provide proof that you are a good, upstanding businessperson. :)

Once you complete & submit your application, there is a short approval process which typically takes just a few days. When Blinkpay is activated for your account, you’ll be notified via email and given access to all the features.

Features

The best thing about Blinkpay is its integration into Blinksale. Because we built this service from the ground up, we are able to do some pretty cool things:

• Easy payment controls. You can turn credit card payments on or off for your entire account, and your “Send Invoice” dialogue will always remember your saved preference. You may also override this account-wide setting on each individual “Send Invoice” dialogue. So, you could turn credit card payments on for all invoices, but then uncheck the option as you send an invoice to a particular client. He will not be allowed to pay the invoice with a credit card.
• Simple payment page. When a client receives a Blinkpay-enabled invoice, there will be a “Pay this invoice” link at the top of the invoice. Clicking that link will bring the client to a payment page where he can select his payment type (if applicable) and enter his payment information.
• Notifications. Whenever a client makes a payment, you’ll receive a notification on your dashboard. As Blinkpay grows, you’ll receive other types of notifications as well as the option to be notified via email.
• Smart actions. When a client successfully pays an invoice in full via Blinkpay, Blinksale will automatically receive payment for the invoice, close it, and put a notification on your dashboard. All that’s left is to send a Thank-you note.
• Automatic receipts. When a client makes a successful payment, they’ll be emailed a receipt for their payment. It’s one less thing you’ll have to worry about.
• Automatic deposits. Your transactions will be processed in a daily batch and deposited into your linked account. You don’t have to go looking for your money like with PayPal.

We’re just getting started

We built Blinkpay for you, so getting paid for your work could be a faster, more enjoyable experience. Credit cards are just the starting point. We plan on building more features and payment options onto Blinkpay as it grows.

Now get out there and get paid!