Clinkle

Mobile wallet that treats you & friends to fun surprises

1 follower

Mobile wallet that treats you & friends to fun surprises

1 follower

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Launch tags:Tech

Launch Team

Startup Challenge

— A debit card — An app showing transaction history — Rewards shared with friends — Sending cash to friends Did I got it right?

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12yr ago

Blurt

@yurylifshits I had the same struggle. Still wondering why I should want this? Clearly I'm not the demo.

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12yr ago

Clinkle

Maker

@yurylifshits yup! with plenty more in the pipeline :D

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12yr ago

Cover

As a former regulator and co-founder of a mobile payments startup, this one's a headscratcher. Is this a less profitable version of HigherOne? Is it Simple for a smaller market and four years too late? Do they think there'll be enough prepaid interchange to pay for rising customer acquisition costs, loyalty programs, and infrastructure? This has become a fairly mature and competitive market - they're going up against WalMart and AmEx, and it seems like a company with such a troubled history chose to pivot into an extremely tough spot. And then there's the future regulatory headaches that are coming down the pike. It's unclear how much of the advertising about fees on the website would survive Reg DD scrutiny if this were a debit card. It's not. Like Simple, it's a general purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid card. There aren't substantive regulations on disclosure yet, although the CFPB has announced rules coming in this area: http://files.consumerfinance.gov... Still trying to figure out how this is going to work out well.

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12yr ago

Clinkle

Maker

@megerman Hey Mark! We don't make [EDIT: profit] on interchange, and don't plan to [EDIT: we get the standard interchange income for issuing banks as revenue]. All of that money goes back into the Treats program. As far as fees, we have a pretty comprehensive set of disclosures on our site, all of which we are presently waiving (and hope to eliminate entirely as we gain traction).

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12yr ago

Cover

@21echoes That's not too surprising, given the relative bargaining power with your issuer - most startups can't really control much of those economics. But not taking any interchange and remitting it all to the networks or your issuer, that seems off. Still, the formula for a GPR is pretty straightfoward. Fees + Interchange + Float - Customer Acquisition - Overhead - Fraud = profit. Sounds like you have no interchange revenues, a costly loyalty program, and there's no way you're going to make money off float given what interest rates are. This isn't rocket science - this is just the very straightforward economics of a well-understood product that anyone can buy off a j-hook at a WalMart, CVS, etc. Breakage can't save this model either - escheatment takes care of that. LevelUp tried losing money on interchange and making it up on loyalty, but well, they quickly learned that didn't work. So I just don't get the economics at play for this product. Unless this whole thing is a loss leader to move students onto higher-margin financial tools, consider me puzzled. Cover is hiring. We make money on every transaction. I highly recommend it.

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12yr ago

Clinkle

Maker

@megerman Sorry, to be clear: we don't make *profit* on interchange, we re-invest it in Treats (our rewards program). Edited my comment above accordingly.

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12yr ago

CB Insights

@megerman This is one of the best comments I have ever read on PH.

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12yr ago

Product Hunt Regular

@mhdempsey Agree. Would love for a Clinkle investor to come in here and respond re: economics of the model.

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12yr ago

On the homepage they have a section saying "We're not into fees", but a quick look at their agreement has a long list of fees, including fees to add money to your card https://www.clinkle.com/legal/ba... - $0.50 per transaction to add money via qualified debit card - $0.30 + 2.9% per transaction to add money via non-qualified debit card - $1 ATM fees - 3% international transaction fees Are these fees common with prepaid debit cards? I can't see someone being too excited to realize that, in some cases, they only have $485 to spend after loading up $500.

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12yr ago

Octane AI

@Moore If they are advertising no fees but have fees... That's not ok

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12yr ago

@benparr They do say "We’re not into fees", "no monthly fees" and "no fee to get your card".

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12yr ago

Aura Frame

@Moore they only have fees for loading via credit/debit. ACH is free. That's reasonable and doesn't make their "no fees" claim totally bogus.

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12yr ago

Clinkle

Maker

@Moore no Clinkle member has ever been charged a fee. If we ever had to actually charge these fees, these are what would allow us to break even.

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12yr ago

Backchannel

anyone here know someone at clinkle? lmk so we can give them commenting access - let's get them in the comments :)

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12yr ago

Startup TV

@eriktorenberg I've sent Rob @robertoryan a tweet. Maybe he will jump in.

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12yr ago

Clinkle

Maker

@erictwillis lord save me from the sharks

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12yr ago

Startup TV

@robertoryan You also got lots of compliments about the design though Rob and you're the lead designer right? :)

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12yr ago

Codacy Quality

@robertoryan Great job launching! It looks really well put together.

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12yr ago

Looksy for iMessage

Think this is a good pivot for two reasons: 1) the college focus is a new twist on a very old space, the college town discount card, so you don't need to re-educate your target market; and 2) sending a "free" debit card with absolutely no fees feels like you are getting something for nothing.

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12yr ago

@dannyjespinoza They're promoting "no monthly fees", but they have pretty hefty fees to add money to your card and withdraw it as cash - https://www.clinkle.com/legal/ba...

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12yr ago

Looksy for iMessage

@Moore well if that's the case then this is DOA

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12yr ago

@dannyjespinoza I think it's probably cool for the Stanford crowd, but not for the ramen college kids. I was so strapped for cash in college that I can't imagine ever just sending a friend money for the sake of it. Can I send them an invitation to share a cheap bottle of whiskey and a box of Kraft mac & cheese with Clinkle? Can parents deposit $ directly onto a Clinkle card as easily as they could with a simple online banking transfer?

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12yr ago

Aura Frame

@Moore They have fees to use the card at an ATM, but not to use it as credit. It's a debit card technically since it's backed by a funded account but I think they want you to use it in place of a credit card, not as a bank account. They have a fee to value-load from a credit card, but not by ACH from a bank account. That makes sense because loading from a credit card would likely cost them 3% to Amex/Visa/Stripe/whatever. The $20 liquidation fee is lame. They also have foreign transaction fees, which is fairly normal for mainstream credit cards.

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12yr ago

Clinkle

Maker

@bcherry I spent a good amount of time with that copy. We tried to communicate the facts clearly: 1) We don't want to charge fees. That would be lame for us as Clinkle members, too. 2) while we've never charged anyone a fee (yet) it seemed important to be upfront that that approach doesn't scale 3) if everything goes well, we can remove fees forever

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12yr ago

Octane AI

So it's a card that... Gives you rewards? I mean... Isn't that like every card out there? Why... Why would I use this over my Amex or another card? Their pitch is... Incomplete. Flat. Unappealing. No reason to switch. I'm just sad about the whole Clinkle episode. These comments are gonna be a shit show.

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12yr ago

Simple clone with some ambiguous social rewards program? Pretty seriously underwhelming for a company that's commanded so much hype.

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12yr ago

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