New Features from BisTip.com: SafePay and Quick Message

Peer to peer courier service, Bistip.com launched two new feaatures for their users. The first one is BisTip SafePay and the second one is dealing with the messaging service called as Quick Message.

Quick Message is the feature provided for users to enable replying email from BisTip easier. Panggi Libersa from Bistip explained that this facility will enable users to send message without visiting BisTip website, they can use their email account. Further, their message will be saved in BisTip message service as an attachment on this facilitiy.

BisTip SafePay (as informed on its site since early October, but I only got informed about it few days ago), is a escrow facilities provided by BisTip for users to make payment for its delivery service as agreed by traveler and requester. Bistiper can use bank transfer system (currently, its only available for BCA) and PayPal.

Panggi from BisTip explained, “Bistip safePay is our escrow that can receive payment from Bank Transfer and PayPal. It can be seen on http://www.bistip.com/safepay. Besides receiving money, it can also be used for cross payment. For example, Indonesian people who stay in foreign country that become the traveler want to be paid by PayPal while the requester doesn’t have any PayPal account, they can get they payment from Bank Transfer (again, it’s currently only for BCA) then the bill to the traveler will be sent in the form of PayPal. The system has been integrated on the messaging feature and managed by BisTip.”

If you read some articles about BisTip on DailySocial, you can read that previously, BisTip has already used RekeningBersama.com (RekBer) that can be the option to pay the service fee for Bistipers. Now, BisTip is developing SafePay to substitute RekBer.

There are some reasons to use SafePay as explained by Panggi in term of other Bistip service such as: Rekening Bersama is a service provided by third party therefore there is an obstacle to be integrated since they are two different services. On the other hand, SafePay is managed by BisTip and it is integrated with the messaging feature on BisTip website from the beginning of the payment process until the payout process.

The second reason is the “cross payment” as explained above. Users can combine two services to receive and make payment.

To use SafePay service, users will be charged 2% for bank transfer from BCA and 4% PayPal both for those who request to make payment and for traveler who wants to get their money. This charge is for operational cost required by BisTip, not from PayPal/BCA. Panggi also explained that in the future, this cost will be one of Bistip's revenue. Although they use it for monetizing, their focus is to solve problems and make users feel easy to use their service.

Now, BisTip has 3.100 users and 1.500 combined route made by users. They are also preparing new feature that is BisTip Point that is planned to be released in December. BisTip Point can be collected by users who promote other users’ route. Further, the points collected can be exchanged with the discount voucher for their transaction on BisTip SafePay.

These two features are quite interesting from the strategy provided for users. Although they are charged fee for SafePay function, it is actually the win-win solution. Now, we just need to see the users’ reaction/adoption on this service.

On the other hand, replying email directly from email account without visiting BisTip website can be tricky. On one side, replying email without visiting BisTip website can be more personal and fasten the communication process, especially for the traveler. However, regarding the basic aim of BisTip and users’ response, if users get easier way to use BisTip service, they will keep using it.