The best innovations are sometimes both simple to grasp, elegant in the solution they create, and almost always obvious in retrospect.

PayPal’s “Paypal.me” idea ticks all 3 checkboxes, providing individuals, startups and solopreneurs alike with a quick and easy way to invoice for services, creating payment links “on the fly” like this:

https://www.paypal.me/magneticmarketing/199

for example.

Simple to grasp, elegant and super-quick to set up.

There are so many ways this can be used; here’s some quick ideas:

• You’re a business growth consultant who charges £120/hour, offering some freemium content on a Google Hangout or Periscope to a targeted group. At timely moments during the valuable free group session, explain that for one on one sessions, viewers can take advantage of a 30 minute “special” where you’re offering to help them move forward, at a 50% discount: http://paypal.me/yourname/30. Or perhaps instead, if they want to take the next step, you could send them to http://paypal.me/yourname/1 for a £1/$1 trial for a 15 minute session.
• You’re out with some business friends & the group decides to go for an impromptu Italian meal – but you’ve accidentally left your credit cards at home. Since there’s no charge to receive money if it’s from friends, most of the group have already grabbed their own personalised Paypal.me link, and the leader sends you his Paypal.me link for your share of the meal via text.
• You’ve just introduced a new B2B service and you’re with a prospective client who really seems to want to trial the system today, but you’re not entirely sure they’re being serious. You could create a Paypal.me link “on the fly” as you’re talking with them as way of checking where they’re at: “Tell you what, let me text you a trial link where you can run with our full system for 30 days, and then you’ll be in a much better place to see if this is really a good fit for your business”.

…this is obviously just the tip of a very large iceberg in terms of how Paypal.me could be used.

But you can already see that with a bit of preparation on your part, you can leverage Paypal.me in all sorts of creative ways to help with better cashflow, give new clients a low risk way to get on-board, and a whole bunch more.

How about a tip jar for Bloggers, with a WordPress plugin that gives the reader an Ajax-based dropdown where they select the amount they want to tip and then pay via Paypal.me in just a few clicks)?

Or maybe something similar to the above for a yard sale, or even you’re own Etsy-style “pay what you reckon” e-commerce page, where visitors can choose from a range of prices?

What ideas can you come up with that will help your business using Paypal.me?