YapStone, a company that develops an electronic payments as a service technology for property management and other vertical markets, has raised $50 million in new funding led by Accel Partners with Meritech Capital Partners participating.
YapStone develops RentPayment, end-to-end, payment services platform for property managers to easily accept credit cards and e-Checks for rent and other recurring payments. It essentially aims to disrupt the act of mailing in a check monthly for renters and landlords. The technology is currently serving thousands of property management companies representing over 3 million apartment units.
The beauty of YapStone is that it provides tailored e-payment features for the rental vertical. For example, YapStone allows landlords to separate payments received into categories like security deposits, late fees, and monthly rent. For renters, YapStone gives consumers the ability to put rent on a credit card. The payments system will even send a text to a renter’s mobile phone reminding them to pay.
Additionally, YapStone is using its technology to expand to other verticals including storage, dues payments and vacation rentals. In fact, the company was recently selected as the payments solution for vacation rental giant HomeAway.
Accel partner Todd Maclean tells us that the vacation rentals and home rentals are huge markets in terms of customer reach, and that the firm’s view is that not only is Yapstone the market leader, but the company is well positioned to be in the middle of the convergence of e-payments.
The new funding will be used for YapStone to expand to new verticals, and to support international expansion and acquisitions.
Pizza Acasa
Twitter seems simple enough to use; how difficult can 140 characters be, right? But now imagine trying to monetize Twitter to its full potential. Not quite as easy. And it’s no secret that a big part of Twitter’s strategy is developing its platform to enable brand support — in other words, making it easier for brands to expose their message to the right users. But this, too, has been a slow process. So, in stepps SocialFlow, a young startup that is teaching brands to more effectively use Twitter to target their customers. SocialFlow uses data analysis to enable brands to do this and allows companies to send SocialFlow their Tweets so that they can determine when is the best time for them to blast out their message, for example.
It’s no secret that the local buying and selling market is an active one these days. Blink once and you will likely have missed the launch of five local-focused startups. PayPal, eBay, and craigslist all offer models that have become the roadmap for a number of startups trying to intermix their features for a more targeted local market of buyers and sellers. 
The WWDC 2011 keynote has just wrapped up, and Steve Jobs and company have announced some very interesting features for the iOS family of devices, including improvements to browsing, rich reminders, and a slightly Android-esque Notification Center.
More and more, news consumption is happening online and on mobile devices. But there’s so much news on the Web today, many have turned to filters and aggregators to concentrate the fire hose of information. Whether we rely on social mechanisms like Twitter and Facebook or RSS feeds, we’re looking for an enhanced, social, and refined way to consume content from the sites we love, while discovering news that matters to us via sites we may not check as regularly.
Loopt has gone through quite a few incarnations, and this morning that tradition continued as the mobile social network announced it was entering the daily deals space with a service called U-Deals. In essence, U-Deals lets users request their own deals. After submitting an idea for a deal, users can then drum up interest by way of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, etc. If the deal receives enough support, Loopt will contact the business and request that they help turn the deal dream into a deal reality.
Huge news in the gaming world: PopCap Games, the company behind such hits as Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled, is in the process of being acquired — and we’re hearing from multiple sources that the price is over $1 billion.
Apple has just announced its iMessages service for iOS devices which allows all iOS 5 users to send videos, text, photos, group msgs and receipts across all iOS devices.
Groupon has just announced in a press release the addition of Ariel Investments president Mellody Hobson to the company’s Board of Directors. In addition to the president position Hobson is also Chairman of the Board of of trustees for Ariel’s no-load mutual funds.
It’s no secret that game companies like Zynga have many of their mechanics — be it the initial walkthrough or payment process — down to a science. But for the so-called “long tail” of developers, finding or building the requisite tools is far from trivial.
With regard to today’s WWDC keynote, we were right about a lot of things. Twitter/iOS. Revamped notifications. Widgets (though they didn’t call them “widgets” on stage, the weather and stock areas in the notifications pull-down are widgets). iOS Messages (okay, this was more of a dream that somehow came true). July launch for OS X Lion. No “iPhone 4S”. iCloud WWDC launch. iOS 5 fall launch.
Now that the WWDC keynote is over and I’ve had a little bit of time to reflect, I’ve been thinking about what excited me the most from today’s announcements. The list is long, no doubt. But I think I’m going to have to go with something that surprised me — while at the same time making me look smarter than perhaps I really am. (Again, just perhaps.) iMessages.
Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post titled “Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?“. Not surprisingly, it fired people up. About 1,000 comments later, there was a full-on fanboy war between the Apple and Google sides. But the point was actually something we can look back on. Was Android surging ahead of the iPhone in the United States because Apple only had a deal with AT&T?
The Next-Generation Portable we’ve been hearing about for a good five months now has finally been owned up to by Sony. It is, as rumors had it, called the Playstation Vita, and the many features we’ve heard about (dual touchscreens, cameras, Near, and so on) are all official.
Google, Google, Google … I don’t know if it’s that you just don’t understand the intricacies of intrapersonal relationships or if getting the social stuff right is just extremely difficult …
Cloud storage and collaboration startup Box.net is upping the ante against competitor Microsoft SharePoint today with the launch of an in-depth integration with Google’s productivity suite Google Docs and Spreadsheets directly within the platform. Essentially, the integration allows for users to create, update and collaborate on Google docs within the Box platforms.
Last week, we broke the news that Twitter would be integrated with iOS 5. At the time, we also noted that the timing of the launch of Twitter’s new Photo service was calculated. The feature was launching because Apple needed it in place for iOS 5. Today proves that.
Zynga’s game development studios are on a roll of late, recently revealing GagaVille, and launching Settlers Of Catan-like social combat game Empires & Allies. And today, Zynga Mobile is adding one more title to the mix with the official launch of ‘Hanging With Friends,’ Zynga’s take on classic popular game Hangman within an iOS app.
Players can also use lifelines that offer hints at words and watch instant replays that provide a glimpse into their opponent’s tactics. As you get words correct, you’ll earn coins that can be used for further lifelines, such as the ability to reverse a turn and get more chances to guess letters. Users can also use an ‘extinguish’ lifeline to add four words to a more complicated word. Users can also purchase these coins as a virtual currency.
Back in early May, developer Joe Hewitt surprised a lot of people when he abruptly announced he was leaving Facebook after nearly four years. Hewitt had been vital to everything from the social network’s iPhone app (the most popular app of all time) to (supposedly) the don’t-call-it-a-phone secret phone project. But he apparently wanted to return closer to his pure web roots (he was an early developer of Firefox and built the still widely-used Firebug dev tool). And today we’re seeing the first fruits of that journey back.
After adding Vinod Khosla to its board a few weeks ago, mobile payments startup Square is racking up another big name to its board of directors—Larry Summers. Summers served as Secretary of the Treasury of the United States from 1999 to 2001, and was most recently the Chief Economic Advisor to President Obama. Square says that it has created a new seat on its board for Summers.
Talk about buzz. This whole crowd is just sitting here, wondering if Sony, the almighty Sony, will actually acknowledge the massive data breach. No one is talking about the NGP, PS3, of course not the Move. Nope, it seems to be all about the hacking — and the tasty food Sony’s providing served up by some trendy L.A. food trucks. Will Sony admit responsibility, out the people responsible, or even hand out NGPs as a sort of media payoff. No one knows! But we’ll find out in just moments as Sony’s 2011 E3 presser is set to start shortly. Oh, and thanks for the VIP table, Sony. We love you too.