Thanks @rrhoover! After two years of heads down engineering we’re excited to launch.
Tally makes it easy to stay on top of your credit cards. Instead of charts or advice, Tally actually does the hard work for you. You scan your cards. We give you a line of credit which allows us to help you save money on interest, avoid credit card late fees, or pay down balances faster.
Keep using your cards and getting all the perks and rewards. We’ll take care of the rest.
I’ll be here throughout the day, so please ask questions and provide feedback. We love hearing from hunters!
Best,
Jason, CEO and co-founder of Tally
@jiaqip@rrhoover Thanks! Yes, Tally is currently available in the following US states: California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. And we are adding new states on a regular basis.
@evanlaclark Yes, most people get a better interest rate than their credit card and the APR is mostly determined by your FICO score. We first run a soft credit check to see if your credit card companies are over charging you. If we can find you a lower rate, then you can decide to open the line of credit. Try it out and let me know how it goes!
@jiaqip@rrhoover At Tally, we made a decision early on to remain independent and get our lending licenses state by state. While we know this is the slower route, we believe in the long run it will allow us to better serve our customers since we won’t be beholden to an established bank.
We currently have licenses in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin with a lot more coming online in 2017!!
Very interesting approach to finance automation. Tally aggregates your credit cards to make it easy to monitor your balance, interest rates, etc.
The team raised $17M from Shasta and Cowboy VC before today's public launch. Big swings. 😊
@rrhoover working with founders as hardworking and ambitious as @jason_brown2 and @jasperplatz, going after a huge consumer pain point, is what makes the venture business such a thrill.
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Huge fan of @jason_brown2 and the team at Tally for 2 years of hard work, foundational infrastructure and regulatory work to bring this ambitious service to consumers! So excited to support a service bringing peace of mind to millions with anxiety over credit card debt.
I will give the very clear caveat that I am possibly not understanding this service correctly but this seems like a huge missed opportunity. This is just one more credit line with a tad more convenience and a nicer UI?
You check people's credit and see if you can offer a slightly better APR, ok. But 8-20%?? Anyone who can qualify for your 8% doesn't actually need your service (but could benefit from it), and 20% is just as likely to keep you in debt. And of course, those who actually need help paying off credit cards with a line of credit are getting rejected by Tally.
Here is biggest problem and biggest opportunity (as far as I can tell). Tally, just like any other credit line/card, checks your fico score and gives you a credit line based on your score or rejects you outright if its too low (or debt too high). Those who need it get only a slightly better condition, and those who need it the most don't get approved at all. If a person is in debt and will only get more into debt if given more credit, you shouldn't give him a credit line, understood. But how do you asses that? If you asses it by the credit score and debt ratio you are once again only going to help those who don't really need your service if their doing ok enough. But you still have to do risk management, you don't want to give more credit to those who are going to spend it or default on it. And here lies the missed opportunity, ignore the score and the debt ratio, and go by payment history alone. A person with a lot of debt, low score, and high debt ratio but with 100% or near 100% payment history (never a late/missed payment) is low risk. They have proven they will pay on time for years on end but their score and debt ratio does not reflect that. A person's payment history is far more indicative of their risk level than their score or debt ratio (#RequestForService). If I am wrong about this and you have the data please tell me.
Any in case, I might be missing some aspects of Tally here, and I have little doubt it will be successful, but I don't see this as a service actually trying to help folks get out of debt. It seems like a slightly more convenient way to pay off credit cards for those who can probably manage with just a little more self discipline and planning. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
With a different context from where i'm looking it is a pretty neat service with a better approach than other "pay down cc" type of credit lines, and I do wish you the best.
@jaymutzafi thank you for your honest feedback and yes you are correct, Tally is only for people with good and excellent credit. However, it is a common misconception that credit card debt is primarily a concern for people with lower credit scores. The fact is that the vast majority of credit card balances in the US are held by people with good and excellent credit. It isn’t talked about because credit card debt has a lot of stigmas attached, and these individuals feel a lot of anxiety when dealing with their cards. Check out our blog post on the subject for more information. We are first serving this group of users, and we’ll consider expanding our offering in the future.
Tally isn’t just about consolidation though, and our loan works differently than the majority that you’re used to seeing. We agree that if you just hand someone a check with a lump sum of money that can lead to more problems. That is why you can only use the Tally line to payback credit cards, and it’s important that it’s a revolving line so you only borrow what you need, you’re encouraged to repay as much as you can, and you can reuse your line if a need arises in the future.
Beyond our financially optimized payment algorithm, Tally is also helping with well timed behavioral suggestions. Our suggestions are designed to help our users pay back balances significantly faster.
We hear your concerns however, and will work on ways to open Tally up to even more users.
@jason_brown2 Thanks for the reply Jason. I definitely think the use as only to pay CC is important, I assumed this was the case here, which both serves the intended purpose and reduces risk.
I do hope you think bigger and further than this down the line, as I'm sure you are aware, the credit system is far from optimal and i keep hoping to see someone tackle the problem in a clever and new way. As someone who has both been at times a cc debt holder with poor credit and a cc debt holder with excellent credit, i know that the difference is far more indicative of how the system works than one's behavior, and random circumstances might throw you into one or another.
I understand starting with the low hanging fruit but I do hope you go beyond it. Anything that helps people with this is good in my book.
Thanks @jaymutzafi! I totally hear where you're coming from. I'm glad that it sounds like we both share the same vision to make all credit card users less stressed and better off financially.
We are a young company, so this is where we’re starting but we have big dreams for Tally. We’ll work as hard as we can to bring the vision to life. We don’t want to disappoint you.
@jason_brown2 Absolutely! I'm delighted to hear we share this vision. I hope my original comment didn't come off too negative, I am definitely rooting for you.
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@jason_brown2 Great points made by Jay. Are you guys underwriting the loans yourself? Or who is the partner bank?
What an interesting concept! Say you hook up a few cards to Tally and then you're extended a credit line. You guys then say you only have to pay Tally one payment....is Tally actually consolidating your credit lines at that point so your only outstanding credit is w/ Tally or is does it work in some other way? Wish you had Android so I could play around w/ it!
@hanfordscott Great question! Tally is tailored to you, so depending on your financial situation our algorithm adjusts to make the most optimal decisions on your behalf. When we can save you money on interest or protect you from late fees, you’ll carry the balance with Tally. Otherwise, you can pay directly from your bank account via Tally’s smart recommendations.
Congrats on the launch @jason_brown2 and @jasperplatz!
I'm a big believer in the long term vision of automating personal finance in the same way that wealth management is being automated today. The personal finance space suffers from no shortages of problems to solve in the short term - how did you end up deciding on the initial offering for Tally?
Thanks @asibehar! I’m glad you also share our vision of a fully automated financial life. We decided to start with the biggest, hardest problem first. There are 170 million people who use credit cards and many folks find it stressful to stay on top of them. Plus there are $11B in late fees (12 every single second) and the APRs are way too high. Ultimately we believe that credit cards should be more like a passport and not such a burden. We were excited to try to fill that emotional need.
I think it's an interesting service and people who are looking to pay down debt can benefit from lower interest rates. Design is beautiful and didn't run into any glaring onboarding issues, but I wish I would have known pre signing up (and maybe I missed it) that the only way the app is functional is by actually opening a line of credit.
So you're aware, at that point I had to email support to delete my account because it didn't provide and further value to me. And even though I've built an app that asks users for banking credentials, I was honestly a bit terrified to provide my login + my credit card numbers.
I'd be keen to hear how onboarding goes with cold users, it seems like there's a relatively big challenge of getting someone to:
1) Provide all of their credit & debit card numbers
2) Provide all of their bank logins
3) Open up a line of credit
Hi @alexcohenbirch,
We’re sorry it wasn’t clear up front that you need a Tally credit line. We’ve tried to make it clear before you enter any information but it sounds like we can improve that experience.
The Tally line isn’t just for consolidation though; it allows us to do things like guarantee that our users will never pay a credit card late fee (there are $11B in late fees every year in the US). The best part is it doesn’t negatively impact your credit. In fact many of our users report that Tally improves their credit score which is a win win.
We understand that we ask for a lot of personal information. Security is our number one priority. Usernames and passwords are never stored, your information is transmitted using SSL and all personal information is encrypted using bank-level security. We built the product with security in its DNA. But yes, users do need to trust us which is a challenge in many businesses.
I can’t share our conversion metrics, for obvious reasons, but generally people are willing to share information to gain the benefits of Tally.
@jason_brown2 Understood. It may have just been my skimming/misinterpretation of the product. There's definitely a big market for debt pay and I think you guys have one of the more compelling products versus a generic savings app which either moves money into a savings account or recommends a 0% balance transfer card.
Which leads me to a few other questions:
1) How long does it typically take someone to pay off their debt? If it's sub 13 months and your target market is near prime + consumers, what's the advantage of Tally vs a 0% introductory card and a good debt payoff plan?
2) In the event of a breach and fraudulent charges due to me inputting my physical card numbers, does using Tally void me of fraudulent protection from my bank? I know with usernames/passwords it typically does.
I don't mean to be overly negative, so I will say, the design is absolutely gorgeous!
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