New Payment Platform Puts an End to the Daily Deposit Ritual The expense and time it takes to get money deposited can gouge a company's profit margins. Jay Bhattacharya decided to address nearly every pain point in the transaction process.

There's nothing cheap about moving money. What should be a simple transfer from one account to another can require piles of paper invoices, checks or online payments, which often involve a hold on funds and the equivalent of Ticketmaster's "convenience charge." The expense and time it takes to get money deposited can gouge a company's profit margins.

Jay Bhattacharya decided to address nearly every pain point in the transaction process. As the former head of Citi Ventures, Citigroup's VC unit, and co-founder of Mobile Money Ventures, which was sold to Intuit in 2011, he knew how to navigate the check-processing infrastructure to slash costs. With Jake Howerton, who had launched tech companies Capanis Networks and iNYC Wireless, he founded New York City-based Zipmark, which allows business owners to bypass costly wire transfers, checks and credit or debit cards. Instead, companies and customers link directly to each other's U.S.-based checking accounts, no multiday approval process required. Zipmark charges the recipient of funds a 1 percent transaction fee ($5 maximum). And unlike PayPal, which can hold funds for an indeterminate amount of time, Zipmark guarantees access to those deposited funds the next day.

"Our value to small businesses is to tell them, 'Hey, you're no longer forced to deal with PayPal or credit cards and pay those fees," Bhattacharya says.Businesses can direct customers to a Zipmark payment option on their site or add a QR code to an invoice that takes customers directly to Zipmark's mobile app, where they can submit their payment.