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Clinkle

clinkle.com

29 pointsurs210249 comments

I'm looking at the home page but I have no idea what this is. Is this a payment thing? I see a credit card under "Upgrade your card". No sure what that means though, upgrading my card. Then some more stuff that looks like I can pay with this. Then it talks about "treats" and treating friends. So, is this a payment thing were I collect "rewards" by paying for stuff and instead of rewarding myself I have to reward my friends?

From just the home page, I find this very confusing.

I'm not actually sure - I wanted to see if anyone on HN has actually tried it. It seems like a big muddle of half-thought through ideas. I'm curious what the history of the idea was from when they started to when they ended up with 'this'.

it has been well documented in the press

where "well documented in the press" here means "rumors blogged about in the press". we've been working on Clinkle as a pre-paid card program with rewards since 2012.

I've never seen an engineer of a product coming on HN to defend the product in reply to negative comments work out very well...

one can always dream.... but seriously, you're totally right.

It appears to be a visa prepaid credit card. See here: https://www.clinkle.com/legal/bancorp-cardholder-agreement

Treats sound like gamification mixed with gambling, but you can only give the rewards to others?? Check the details here, it's kinda complicated: https://www.clinkle.com/legal/treats

Hey! Engineer from Clinkle here.

"Upgrade your card" is about how there are next to no debit cards with rewards programs, free p2p, and budgeting/payments alerts.

Treats are indeed effectively rewards, and yes they are meant to be a little more than the altruistic than traditional rewards.

Sorry for the confusion; we're tightening up the copy as we go forward. Hoped to fly under the radar for another few weeks, but someone tipped off the press :(

All debit cards have free p2p with Square Cash.

Most have it with Venmo too.

The headlines in this product make no sense. Seriously the main page's headline is:

"Pay it friendly. Treat your friends" [imagery of two friends eating popsicles]

Compare this to Square "Start selling today. Take care of your business anywhere with Square" [picture of a square ipad reader]

I think it's clear which company illustrates better what the actual product is.

What a disappointing product after such hype. Seems like a desperation pivot. I'd guess that the business partnerships didn't pan out and Apple supplants their proprietary technology with Apple's ecosystem. Given how crowded the rewards marketplace is, this seems like they're just throwing good money after bad.

Mmm, we haven't pivoted at all! Prepaid card with rewards program has been in the works since 2012 and was part of the pitch to investors. Rumors in the press really lead the public astray tho :(

"part of the pitch"? Does that mean there was some other product or feature that was more central to the pitch presented to investors?

So I was reading about clinkle last night and I was thinking "What a joke!", but as they now have a product I decided to try and check it out.

Obviously, I'm curious of what I have to pay. Encouragingly, there's text that says:

> Clinkle has no minimums, no monthly fees, and no fee to get your card. There’s no fee to load funds from your bank account, and no fee to use Treats. That’s the way we like it.

But then, in smaller letters with font color that almost matches the background, it says:

> Read more about the few fees we do charge in our Cardholder Agreement.

Does this seem disingenuous to anyone other than me? The first impression is no fees, and then I realize that I know nothing about what fees they'll charge. No thanks.

I've never heard of them, and don't understand how two posts got on to the front page within minutes about Clinkle. Voting ring perhaps?

The press went ape-shit about our funding round announcement a year ago. The site's actually been live for a week now, but we didn't want any attention on it until we were further along in our roll-out :(

As 21echoes (sp?) points out, it has a lot to do with their funding. They apparently set a record for some stage of funding (seed?) for startups. I read about them yesterday because someone here on HN mentioned them along the same vein

Clinkle had become a bit infamous in startup circles over the young age of its founder, the large amount he raised from top-tier VCs, and his failure to launch anything. That they have actually launched something is big news to anyone that had been paying attention.

So it's another Color then? Got it.

And I just noticed there's another post about Clinkle on the front page.

Hey! Engineering manager here. We have to date never charged someone a fee, and in most app usage you most certainly will not encounter them.

We are, however, often charged heavy fees by the ATM and Credit Card companies (for unloading your money at an ATM, or loading your prepaid card with a credit card, specifically), and we went with the prepaid card market norms here around which of those we don't cover on your behalf. Legally, because we do reserve the right to not cover these fees, we have to have the footer text there on the site.

As we ramp up our revenue, we hope to begin covering more and more of these fees for our users.

Oh hi! Thanks for the response. prostoalex wrote this on the thread:

> It's a prepaid debit card with rewards program.

Is that correct, but with the ability to load it with a credit card? Essentially, if I buy into it and use only my debit card and cash with it, it's a prepaid card with bonuses and no fees?

Yup! Credit card integration is in the works, but until then ACH linking is totally free (& faster than most, as we don't use the 3-day delay "challenge amounts" system most competitors use except as a fallback)

Your verification sucks big time! You never sent text messages and I'm locked out of my invite as you have a limit of 3. I signed up with my Google Voice and now I'm in some queue of 150K suckers. How can you design this so poorly? I understand text messages cost you pennies, but you can only turn away early adopters this way, because who else cares about your service at this point? Also, when I switch to my SMS app to get the code and switch back to your app, you're return me to the phone number entry screen and waste another text message. How can I receive I text message from you, when you're in full-screen mode (without any reason, by the way) without switching to my SMS app to see the code?! And why does it need to be a 6-digit number, really? And because of your fancy input, I cannot even paste! This is some poor UX, guys, no offense, but it's like people who never touched this app coded it!

I just realized recently the major distinction between the San Francisco tech scene and the South Bay/Silicon Valley tech scene: substance.

The South Bay has all these established players like Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, etc(to name the larger names). San Francisco has the revenue-earners and shit like Clinkle(I guess we have Uber and Airbnb but that story hasn't fully played out yet). Like Square and Dropbox are toast and both SF companies.

I guess it's a small distinction but an important one. The SF tech scene is much, much younger than it's South Bay counterpart.

Clinkle will definitely fail(that is it will never become an established player on it's own like South Bay companies like Apple/Google/Yahoo/etc.). It'll likely be acquired or maybe even crash and burn, regardless I sincerely question it's long-term potential as I do most SF-based tech companies.

FWIW, Clinkle was housed in Mountain View for quite a while. While I generally agree with you on the distinction between established players vs startups, I don't think the geographic classification is clear cut as you make it.

It's more of a hypothesis than a matter of fact. I do find it interesting that they moved to SF. Perhaps it was because companies like Clinkle can't hack it in the South Bay because engineers in the South Bay don't want to work for that crap(no long-term potential).

I'm based in SF so I have no preference for the South Bay, it's just something I've noticed.

Is this ultimately a Stanford vs Cal rivalry thing?

Why is Dropbox failing? Is Square failing because of Apple pay?

Both will fail because of the Apple/Google conglomerate. Unless they have an ace up their sleeve I'm seeing acquisitions on both parts within a ~year.

That feels like an awfully strict definition of failure, especially since IF Dropbox and/or Square are acquired, it would be for well over 10-11 figures.

If the goal is to create a sustainable business than an acquisition would be a failure.

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/11/19/salesforce-c...

Big companies move to where real estate is cheaper.

No, it is not! And it's buggy. It says I've received 3 verifications already to my phone, when I've never got any, and it's now asking me to send them an email, which they never reply to (I've been thru this a few months ago)! The most annoying onboarding process I've seen! Annoying and irrelevant at that stage low-res videos. Forces you to slide up things when it's not necessary. All that fanfare for nothing!

Google Wallet and PayPal Debit Card (with its 1.5% cashback on everything and the short-term $1,000 credit when your balance is not enough to cover a charge) already work great for me!

This is great news. I have been looking for a compelling pre-paid debit card ever since my Kardashian Kard was abruptly removed from my life[1] and this looks like it fits the bill.

I hope Dogecoin integration is coming soon. If I could load my Clinkle with Dogecoin, I would finally be able to ditch my Amex Centurion.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/29/pf/kardashian_kard_terminate...

I also loved my Kardashian Kard ... even if you could only purchase pedicures with it. Now all I'm left with is Kim's wisdom (in combination with Soren Kierkegaard's philosophy): https://twitter.com/KimKierkegaard

It's a debit card with rewards program.

"Swipe like your normal debit card to buy everyday stuff, like an espresso"

like... I still have absolutely no idea what's going on here.

so I said "Ya know what - I'm going to give them a chance." then downloaded the app, filled out the form on my phone and since I didn't go to college I'm 146,333 on the public waiting list. Awesome.

I haven't used a prepaid card before - But I figured I'd play around with it and get my friends to join as currently we're transferring funds for rent/food etc.. (use case?) but now apparently they need a different kind of feedback.

Good luck Clinkle

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8358737

Was prepaid debit card their pitch to investors?

No, it was a payment system that used high frequencies.

Is this the idea that they raised $30 million with? It's essentially Venmo with an opaque "Treats" feature.

Their original idea was basically Apple Pay.

I had never heard of this until today, suspect I will never hear about it ever again.

How is this different from all the reward cards out there?

Sometimes I feel like a negative nancy, but seriously, what the crap. A rewards program? Really?

What does this have over Simple?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com