Clinkle Wants To Become Your Wallet 121
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."
Re:But I just got in to Simple! (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem here as I see it is that too many companies are fighting for this space, using illegal tactics.
For instance, even though my phone is capable of using Google Wallet, it won't work on the device because AT&T somehow gets a veto over using the app on my phone. Its all just data, encrypted and secured data, so why do carriers get to block this app? How is that not illegal restraint of trade?
I don't expect it to be any different with Clinkle. Too many players standing in the way.
Re:But I just got in to Simple! (Score:2, Interesting)
For instance, even though my phone is capable of using Google Wallet, it won't work on the device because AT&T somehow gets a veto over using the app on my phone. Its all just data, encrypted and secured data, so why do carriers get to block this app? How is that not illegal restraint of trade?
In the early 1980's, major players in the American banking system invested heavily in the phone system. It was the reason the banks didn't replace the easily duplicated magnetic stripe card with the better security offered by the chip and pin process implemented in Europe at that time (which sadly was 40 years ago). We became a back water country with this technology do to corporate priorities. I see a reason for the problem you described if those type of investment relationships still exists today between the telcos and financial institutions.