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Clinkle Wants To Become Your Wallet
vikingpower writes "Clinkle, a new mobile payments start-up, may or may not have succeeded where so many other efforts have fizzled by inventing a practical way to replace credit cards with smartphones. It's hard to say, though, since Clinkle won't say much about how its system works. Its website is, well ... slight. But a prominent group of Silicon Valley investors who do know what Clinkle is cooking up are acting as though it has achieved a breakthrough. On Thursday, Clinkle announced that it had raised $25 million in early financing from Accel Partners; Andreessen Horowitz; Intel; Intuit; Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com; Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal; and a long list of other investors with technology industry pedigrees. The Huffington Post has an article on Clinkle, or rather on Stanford students putting their degree on hold to go work at Clinkle. The Wall Street Journal [paywalled] mentions Clinkle having some 30-odd employees already."
Hmm. It makes a tinkling bells noise when you put in the Konami Code.
"Creates a direct connection between your wallet and our bank account."
Seriously, after applying for an invite a long time ago, I finally got into Simple and started using it, and it really seems to be what banking should be with a great web/phone app. Now I have to sign up and wait for ANOTHER service that is going to replace my bank? - HEX
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Oh boy, wow! Some guys managed to give a powerpoint presentation about releveraging cross-platform web enabled responsive 3.0 paradigms, and some students want to get rich quick, and they made a web page with far too much javascript that seems to be trying to implement some bullshit marketting strategy.
Tell me when they have a product ready. Or better yet, don't, because I'm not going to use it anyway.
No room for a condom.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Wall Street Journal mentions Clinkle having some 30-odd employees already.
But how many normal employees do they have?
And why exactly would I want a product where I have to provide my own terminal to run their code and use my own capped data to support their service? Can't imagine any benefit to the actual consumer over just using my plastic card.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If you're using a mobile browser, be aware that the linked article will spawn a full-screen ad whose "close" button does not appear to consistently work on a touch device.
But back to the story... Okay, so a e-wallet startup got some venture capital. Why is this news, exactly?
#DeleteChrome
if done right. You go to restaurant. Get receipt. Create a one-off closed account with user ID and one-off GUID with exactly the amount of receipt+tip transferred from your actual bank account. Unlike with a card, you just hand the server the user ID+GUID. They never know your full name and credit card number. They can't swap your card with an imposter (plenty of cases where servers will do this if have a similar looking card). If they do decide malicious intent or accidentally mix up your GUID with another, then there is no problem; all that is in the temporary "account" is the exact money. The only thing that will tie them to your accounts is the user ID, and that will not be your direct online banking account, etc.; it will be the (Clinkle's) service. This is just a pipe dream of course, and I'm sure Clinkle's service is more open so that restaurants/etc. don't have to buy new hardware/software; it's probably only a fraction safer than actually giving your plastic card.
The G
You know what else works just as well as a credit card that is way smaller and lighter than a cell phone, never needs recharging, works literally everywhere and already has proven, well-established limited liability for theft? A fucking credit card.
Oh, and nice analysis editor:
Clinkle, a new mobile payments start-up, may or may not have succeeded ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The credit card model has a fairly high cost of risk mitigation.
Fundamentally, you are throwing around what in any sane world would be the most secret of secrets. To hack around that reality, financial institutions bear non-trivial amounts of risk and have to do a lot to do analytics to try to detect fraud. Even with all that, the cardholder must be always vigilant as their circumstance could fall through the cracks.
I've long been amazed that my email provider offers me more rigorous prevention of unauthorized access than my financial institution.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
...they are bloody expensive! The consumer doesn't see most of this, but the merchants pay through the nose. A typical small business will pay around 3% of the total transaction to the credit card company, plus additional fees for payment processing, plus additional fees for certifications, plus...there's always another damned fee.
That could well represent the entire profit margin of a smaller business. Guess what, that means those costs are added into the price. Since most credit card contracts (at least in my country) explicitly prohibit giving a "cash discount" or anything else that would be to the disadvantage of credit card purchases, this means that there is no way out: everyone must pay the higher prices.
It's quite a racket, if you think about it: 3% of the top of a huge chunk of all consumer transactions. I dream of seeing some real competition in the payment processing market.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The dark and evil world that you envision presents no risk or tangible costs to me. My credit card company and Visa assume all of those risks. Sure, you might argue that there are hidden costs that are passed along to all customers when credit cards are used, but costs would hit me anyway, even if I just paid cash (and I don't get 1% back when I pay cash). And if you really think that way then let me assure you that Clinkle and it's investors are out to make a buck too, so in the end this will just mean higher prices that are passed along to the consumer.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I followed the link to their website and the first thing up is their demand my email address. WTF? I cannot just browse their site without them demanding my email?
Next thing, they demand I upgrade my browser. That's my business; it's their business to design their website to use HTML standards.
Do these jerks seriously expect people to sign on after a start like that?
what's the very next article right here on slashdot? an article about how the inventor of PGP cannot properly implement ZRTP, a security application for smart phones. clinkle - starting from scratch - on a payment system for smart phones, making it a high-profile target. this is going to end well.
I don't think I ever want a payment system to be in the hands of one single company. In the Netherlands (Europe even) all banks adopted the same standard for electronic debit payments and this works fine. Credit cards are basically in the hands of two companies, MasterCard and Visa, and this sucks because they behave as monopolists.
IMHO an electronic payment system can only starts as a co-operation between many banks/governments or... bottom up, with some open specification invented by people like you.
Sorry for the link in Spanish, but one of the banks I use in Mexico already offers an option to pay using my celular instead of my debit/credit card. (Clic on Pago Movil)
I can go to many stores (20,000 according to the bank) and simply clic on an app and the bill is settled electronically.
Another example is token authentication, which is used by all banks for Internet banking in Mexico but is rare (o was until about a year ago) in the US.
Why are U.S. banks so backward?
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
And what is your point exactly?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I'm not using 'Clinkle' any more than I was willing to use 'Beenz'.
It's a phone-based credit company with technology that nearly no one understands, and it's quickly raised $25 million. Why does that sound suspicious? Is that charged to Andreessen's phone bill alone? I hope some of it doesn't appear on my elderly mom's phone bill next month.
Server comes to my table with a wireless credit card machine, swipes it in front of me and hands me back my card. I review the amount and scribble a signature.
Easy as can be
Many places don't even require the signature any longer
My bank handles any fraudulent charges on my behalf, no risk to me
Contrast that to other payment systems, like PayPal, where your money is taken by PayPal and not returned for 6 months. Or a fraudulent use requires jumping through multiple hoops to try to get your money back. Ever try to close an account at PayPal? Sorry, we've "permanently limited your account" so you aren't allowed to EVER close it.
I'll stick with credit cards, they work great, earn rewards and are cheap and simple to use.
why would anyone want to replace their credit card with their mobile phone, anyway?
what problem does it solve? what benefit does it give?
there are numerous security and privacy reasons why this is a bad idea but I can't think of even one reason why anyone would want it, or why it might be a good - or even useful - idea.
Was this the brain trust that told us breathlessly that "Ginger" was going to redefine civilization?
Why does my wallet need replacing? It does everything I need it to, and more importantly, it allows me to control my money via more physical means. I'm fine with swiping cards. Cash is fine too. The best part about it is I don't have to give my info to another third party who is going to find ways to take my money.
Deliver open API. Make a smartphone app. Add support for making "payment". Support QR.
Logic:
* Merchant makes payment entry (give it description, unique id, itemized bill if wanting to, and so forth)
* App (or own system) shows QR code with data
* User scans QR code
* User gets full details of the transaction
* User click "Pay" - data gets sent to paypal, which verifies, matches unique ID, and sends confirmation to merchant system.
* Merchant screen shows "Payment OK"
Alternatively you could use bluetooth or NFC to transfer the data instead of or in addition to QR.You could even set the phone app to connect to specific wifi or bluetooth connection automatically (if available) to send the data to paypal, so all devices with camera and wifi would be supported, no need for mobile internet.
PayPal already have the branding and infrastructure. They could do this in a week.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Hope it's good, because it is never going to happen.
Any other hare-brained ideas at which you'd like me to frown?
If this uses the existing systems out there, they must be providing customers with a WiFi or Bluetooth enabled card that can change its own magnetic strip to have different account information on it?
Whatever happened to that thing called cash, by the way? I seem to be using it more and more, and my plastic less and less these days. not that I ever used plastic for more than about 15% of my expenditure.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Here's a guess: its just the bitcoin code with new blocks assigned to a limited set of inside corporations. ie: Its the same as bitcoin but only the owners can make new coins. Reasoning: bitcoin works. Paypal is interested in bitcoin. But bitcoin removes the means of production away from central authority. With coin production centralized, these corporations could ensure eternal significance and revenue through generation of bitcoins and transaction fees. And this group would estabilish the rules of the blockchain, such as rate of coin production, validation of transactions and transaction fees. They would also have the ability to reject processing certain transactions at their discretion... so they could provide a sense of security against black market trades and trades from black listed coutries and companies. In this way they could "claim" to counter some of the concerns with bitcoin: tax evasion, illegal pornography, drugs and money laundering.