Bump Technologies, the developer behind the popular contact-sharing app of the same name, is diving into sharing other things: your money, with the new app Bump Pay for iPhone and iPod Touch.
In Bump Pay, you simply provide the app with your existing PayPal email address. If you’re sending funds, you enter in a dollar amount and bump phones with someone else who is running the app. Bump Pay is very particular in how you touch the devices. We tried seven times before the app recognized the transaction—possibly because of differing case thicknesses or bumping the devices in an incorrect location. Each time the phones vibrated as if the transfer was successful, which left us wondering on first use if it had gone through (it hadn’t).
Once you’re able to get the transfer to recognize, the sender will enter their PayPal password, select the payment source and confirm the transaction. You can opt to have PayPal remember your device, but I’d highly recommend against this for security purposes. After the transaction is complete, the recipient will see a message that they have received whatever the amount. There are no fees to send the payment if you are using your checking account.
Because Bump Pay relies on the physical bumping movement for its transactions, you’ll clearly have to be in arms length of the person with whom you’re swapping cash. Some have found the lack of support for remote payments in Bump Pay problematic, but I disagree. Bump’s aim is to make it easy to share cash quickly in person, and it does just that.
Overall, Bump Pay is incredible in its simplicity. With no need for additional account creation—assuming you have PayPal already—you can be sharing and receiving funds in literally seconds.
