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LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast

bostinno.streetwise.co

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Re: LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast

#2

Post by mpayments »

Interchange zero was such a weird move. They were losing money on every transaction and they decided to get to scale by losing even more money on even more transactions!

When SCVNGR pivoted from daily deals to this it seems they forgot to pick up a business model on the way.

Re: LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast

#5

Post by jefflinwood »

At SXSW Interactive this year, LevelUp was pushing big for its mobile app payment technology.

I'm curious about the market for payments with mobile apps - to me it seems similar to QR Codes, where pundits get excited over the possibilities, but users just aren't interested. I'm guessing this is different outside the US, where credit and debit cards are extremely popular.

Re: LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast

#7

Post by tibbon »

jefflinwood wrote: post #5

At SXSW Interactive this year, LevelUp was pushing big for its mobile app payment technology. I'm curious about the market for payments with mobile apps - to me it seems similar to QR Codes, where pundits get excited over the possibilities, but users just aren't interested. I'm guessing this is different outside the US, where credit and debit cards are extremely popular.

Yea, they did a killer job at SXSW this year getting in front of a lot of people and making real transactions. The hardware is great, but getting stuff into vendors is hard.

Re: LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast

#8

Post by LilValleyBigEgo »

But LevelUp is an awful product...

Seriously, have you ever tried to use it?

I tried LevelUp at five different merchants. My experiences were:

1. Merchant 1 didn't know what "LevelUp" was despite signs on the door and a glowing LED lit platform with a smartphone on it labelled "LevelUp" in glowing letters.

2. Merchant 2 tried to take my payment but their phone couldn't get a signal, so I had to pay with cash.

3. Merchant 3 refused to take the LevelUp payment. Said they only accept cash. When I pointed to the LevelUp sign the merchant said they didn't know how to use it. When pressed for details they said they only wanted LevelUp to bring in more customers and that they had no intention of actually using it.

4. Merchant 4, after 3 minutes of trying to scan the QR code on my phone, finally gave up and asked me to pay with cash.

5. Merchant 5 didn't know how to use the smartphone provided by LevelUp to take payments and insisted that I pay with cash.

I'm usually pretty patient when it comes to new technology but I've talked with other people who have also tried using LevelUp (and other ePayment methods involving smartphones) and they have all said something like "if making a payment with my phone is harder than taking out a card and swiping it, it's pointless."

Re: LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast

#9

Post by ry0ohki »

This to me was an example of too many pivots. First a FourSquare clone, then a Groupon clone, now a Square clone. Seth seems like an interesting guy, but it's hard to feel the company doesn't have the right focus, always hopping to the next thing without perfecting the last one.

I remember I went to a bar that actually had LevelUp when it first launched in Philadelphia, and no one there had any idea what it was. Finally they got the manager on the phone and he had a vague recollection of talking to some rep about signing up. That just showed me how the marketing/education aspect was completely missing, despite their slow thorough rollout.

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