Chirpify snags former American Express director to help boost its Twitter commerce platform

Following a successful $1.3 million funding round from investors including HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu, and former Facebook exec Rudy Gadre, Twitter commerce company Chirpify has snagged former American Express director Rayburn Chan to push its social payment platform.

Chan joins as Chirpify’s Vice President of Corporate Development, helping to connect millions of users and brands on Twitter and helping the company to facilitate payments between them.

Previously with Vesta, a mobile payments company, Chan was behind the development of its mobile wallet platform, working with brands and business to develop strategic partnerships. He spent a decade at American Express, working on product management and marketing partnerships.

Chirpify CEO Chris Teso explains has high hopes for Chan:

“Having a seasoned leader with such deep payment processing and mobile expertise like Rayburn will prove instrumental to Chirpify’s success.

As our platform scales, providing in-stream payments for fundraising, commerce and peer-to-peer, expect to see more businesses and consumers to utilize Chirpify in the coming months thanks to the tireless work of Rayburn and others at Chirpify.”

Back in April, Chirpify announced it had scored $1.3 million in funding from an impressive array of investors, including Voyager Capital, HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes, TiE Oregon Angels, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu, investor Geoff Entress and former Facebook exec Rudy Gadre.

It also launched its Twitter Commerce for Digital Content platform, allowing artists and musicians to sell digital content directly through Twitter.

Chirpify is well known for its ‘Tweet-a-Beer’ campaign during SXSW. The app, put together by Waggener Edstrom and TenFour, used Chirpify to ‘send someone a beer’ by tweeting them a couple of dollars with a message.

The Portland, Oregon-based Chirpify uses a crisp in-stream transaction model that lets all of your transactions take place right in a Tweet. You can buy physical goods, sell things, donate to charities or pay someone for goods with one Tweet.