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.
@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?
@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.
@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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Simple clone with some ambiguous social rewards program? Pretty seriously underwhelming for a company that's commanded so much hype.
This seems like a worse version of Simple. I don't think treats are a big enough incentive to get users to change behavior. Of course, if they're going to be successful at all, it's best to start with colleges like they're doing.
@lylemckeany Thanks so much for the feedback, and sorry to hear it comes across that way :(
What features do you love on Simple that you think we lack? We think we're extremely competitive on feature set, better on design, and have a rewards program on top of all of that... but obviously we're a bit biased now and again ;D
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This just feels confused. It's like they grabbed features from Simple and Venmo, then added an ambiguous rewards system where you don't know how much you are earning, but can share those rewards with other people? Easy money transfer and transaction tracking + alerts are nice, but also available on a bunch of other options that already have traction. No compelling reason to switch.
Pretty site though.
The issue I have with this is that I would need to get a new card for this to work. If they could make it work with any cc, that would be cool. Also - for my friend to receive the "treat", they must have a clinkle card, which is annoying.
It sounds like the whole premise of this relies on people (especially college kids) being highly altruistic. I'm not normally cynical, but this feels like a big gamble. Though the results could be surprising.
@alirtariq As a company, we really wanted the product to be altruistic and giving (unlike most players in the financial space who are interested in nickel & diming). While our mission statement video ( ) was mocked in the tech blogs for being over-earnest & heavy handed without any product to back it up, we really do stand behind the vision of commerce it lays out.
Obviously the product still has a long road ahead of it, but we're more than willing to make that gamble, and will bet on the altruism of everyday folks again and again as we iterate :D
Thanks so much for the feedback
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