Clinkle

Clinkle was an American startup founded in 2011¹, which sought to facilitate mobile payments with ultrasonic signals emitted by smartphones. The company's $25 million seed round in June 2013 was the largest in Silicon Valley history. Clinkle abandoned its ultrasonic technology due to insurmountable technical challenges and pivoted to launching a prepaid debit card service in 2014. The company ultimately failed to deliver a viable product and shut down in 2016.

Clinkle was an American startup founded in 2011, which sought to facilitate mobile payments with ultrasonic signals emitted by smartphones. The company's $25 million seed round in June 2013 was the largest in Silicon Valley history. Clinkle abandoned its ultrasonic technology due to insurmountable technical challenges and pivoted to launching a prepaid debit card service in 2014. The company ultimately failed to deliver a viable product and shut down in 2016. ==Product== Clinkle released an app for download on Google Play and the iTunes Store. Clinkle first launched on college campuses and targeted merchants near college campuses. Clinkle announced on September 26, 2013, that after two months of opening their college waitlists, over 100,000 students¹ had signed up despite no clear product description. Until September 2014, the app had very limited functionality and only allowed users to join a waitlist with a launch date of that month and year. Before launching, the company had released limited information about its product, despite significant press coverage. The product was intended to include a mobile app that served as an online wallet. Wallets would be linked to existing credit cards and bank accounts. A June 2013 report by TechCrunch stated that the app was going to use high-frequency sound to send payments between devices; however, the section was shortly retracted. Clinkle confirmed that the product would not require near field communication, a wireless technology used by Google Wallet and Apple Pay. Clinkle stated that the product would also provide merchants with information about their customers for the purpose of targeted sales promotions. Despite its initial launch as an alternative payments processing system, it lost its technological edge to new products like Venmo, a peer-to-peer payments app, and later Apple Pay, which achieved what the company had originally set out to do. The company decided to pivot, and launched to the public on September 24, 2014, a new flagship downloadable application aimed at college students. The launch debuted a Clinkle Card that allowed users to earn rewards for paying at stores and online. After every seventh payment, Clinkle card users were awarded a "Treat" to send to a friend, which had a chance of earning the recipient a free purchase. ==Further reading== Business Insider TechCrunch ==External links==

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