Send money online — with ease — via Canada’s AlertPay

With AlertPay, a Montreal-based online payment solution I’ve been using over the past month or so, your friend can pull out his smartphone and email you the $40 while you’re still out together. Because you know he never, ever, forgets his phone.

In a nutshell, this increasingly popular service — which has signed up more than a half-million new accounts over the last four months alone (for a total of 4.5 million users) – lets people send and receive money online, via a computer or smartphone (with web browser).

Along with the abovementioned scenario, you can also shop online securely using AlertPay (linked to your credit card or bank account); send money to friends, family or colleagues in nearly 200 countries and in 23 different currencies (more than what PayPal, a comparable service, offers); or in some areas, even pay for parking on the spot.

Available in English and French, I’ve also found this service is easier to use than competing online payment services. After you sign up for an account at AlertPay.com, you simply click on what you need to do — such as send money, shop online or sell online (to add AlertPay to your store’s checkout system) — and the intuitive menus walk you along for each step.

Speaking of businesses, companies can also use AlertPay to bill clients who owe them money — including the option to use a template for number of items purchased, price per item, colour, and so on — and recipients can then pay via an AlertPay account, or if they don’t have one, with a valid credit card. Many small-to-midsized businesses even pay their employees using AlertPay, says the company.

All transactions use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to protect users, plus the service is certified by McAfee Secure and VeriSign Extended Validation.

AlertPay is also cheaper to use than the competition. For example, the “Personal Starter” account is free to send and receive money, up to $400 a month and $2,000 for a lifetime. This is what I’ve been using. Once you go over this amount, it’s still free to send money but the recipient pays 2.5 percent on the transaction, plus a flat fee of 25 cents. Therefore, the person you’re sending $100 to, for example, gets a total of $97.25.

So, thanks to Canadian technology, now your friend can’t use the ‘ol “I left my cash at home” line we’ve been hearing for centuries.

Sync readers, have you tried AlertPay? Is there another online payment system you prefer?