Kevin Farnham, June 13th, 2008 Comments(2)

Micro-commerce is an emerging global trend, from the microcredit pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, to micropayment systems offered by companies like ZayPay. ZayPay is used for payments for online services, game sites, dating sites, and others. And now they offer an API.

Their new API is designed to enable business owners to receive payment from customers using mobile phones via SMS and other means (see our ZayPay API profile for more details).

One of the core features of the API are a variety of Price Settings for controlling which countries and payment methods are supported:

When logged in to your free Zaypay account, you can create so-called ‘Price Settings’. A Price Setting defines what countries and payment methods you want to support and is the base for working with the API. You can dynamically choose the amount to be paid through the API (though you could also choose not to do this, and use the amount setup in the Price Setting). The API won’t go outside the boundaries of what you chose to support in the Price Setting you’re using it with.

The ZayPay API is REST-based, with data returned in XML. An API key is used for authentication and SSL is supported. The API is well-documented in the ZayPay API Integration Guide, which includes plenty of examples.

Omerta, one of the world’s largest multiplayer online games, recently added ZayPay as a method by which users can contribute donations to keep the game running.

On the mobile side, given that no technology has ever spread faster around the globe than mobile phones, it will be interesting to see how micro-payment services like the ZayPay API are integrated into mobile commerce applications.