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Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

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Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tally underwrites. from https://www.meettally.com/how you will need to qualify for and get the Tally Credit Line. Depending on your credit history, your APR (which is the same as your interest rate) will be between 7.9% - 19.9% per year. And similar to credit card APRs, it will vary with the market based on the Prime Rate. This looks like it could be helpful, but those rates are no better than your local CU offers. A…

If a credit card company can make money from me by charging the merchants I use the card with, and the credit card company gets its money for free through bank deposits and the credit card company has decades and hundreds of millions already invested in its underwriting model, how can Tally sustainably charge me less than the credit card company?

Most of these lending startups are relying on dumb money institutional investors who have been chasing yield in the low interest rate environment.

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tally underwrites. from https://www.meettally.com/how you will need to qualify for and get the Tally Credit Line. Depending on your credit history, your APR (which is the same as your interest rate) will be between 7.9% - 19.9% per year. And similar to credit card APRs, it will vary with the market based on the Prime Rate. This looks like it could be helpful, but those rates are no better than your local CU offers. A…

If a credit card company can make money from me by charging the merchants I use the card with, and the credit card company gets its money for free through bank deposits and the credit card company has decades and hundreds of millions already invested in its underwriting model, how can Tally sustainably charge me less than the credit card company?

cherry picking

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a credit card company can make money from me by charging the merchants I use the card with, and the credit card company gets its money for free through bank deposits and the credit card company has decades and hundreds of millions already invested in its underwriting model, how can Tally sustainably charge me less than the credit card company?

cherry picking

i think that's the only way it works

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cherry picking

i think that's the only way it works

You can probably build a $100m - $1B business that way. You're not going to be cap1 (though cap1 serves lots of customers prime banks won't touch, so they have their own niche).

Also, there may be lots of people who foolishly don't use CUs. If Tally can reach lots of them they'll do well for themselves.

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#15

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this looks like a business with massive downside risk and very little upside. It's bundling a bunch of bad debt (nobody who manages their money well is going to pay 20% interest if they have better options) and hoping that the aggregate is less risky. I have a feeling we've seen that sort of wishful thinking about debt before. So what am I missing that makes Tally so good at mana…

They noticed that credit card companies make lots of money and are betting that they can skim from that profit margin. Seems reasonable to me.

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#16

I built the core financial engineering stack at Tally and absolutely love our product! The stuff I worked on was cool (lots of highly non convex optimizations, cool statistical methods, all Scala stack, very FP-oriented, etc.) but mainly the experience we deliver to consumers is incredibly powerful. The biggest challenge was probably getting this very complex, very real-time concept to work on an antiquated financial…

It's remarkably difficult to find your company page with a search engine. I tried "tally financial" and "tally credit card" as my search terms.

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#17
post #16

I built the core financial engineering stack at Tally and absolutely love our product! The stuff I worked on was cool (lots of highly non convex optimizations, cool statistical methods, all Scala stack, very FP-oriented, etc.) but mainly the experience we deliver to consumers is incredibly powerful. The biggest challenge was probably getting this very complex, very real-time concept to work on an antiquated financial…

It's remarkably difficult to find your company page with a search engine. I tried "tally financial" and "tally credit card" as my search terms.

[deleted]

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#18
post #16

I built the core financial engineering stack at Tally and absolutely love our product! The stuff I worked on was cool (lots of highly non convex optimizations, cool statistical methods, all Scala stack, very FP-oriented, etc.) but mainly the experience we deliver to consumers is incredibly powerful. The biggest challenge was probably getting this very complex, very real-time concept to work on an antiquated financial…

It's remarkably difficult to find your company page with a search engine. I tried "tally financial" and "tally credit card" as my search terms.

yea it's a busy term. we just came out of stealth so it will take us a little to climb up the search rankings. (part of the tradeoffs you are making when picking a company name.)

https://www.meettally.com/

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's remarkably difficult to find your company page with a search engine. I tried "tally financial" and "tally credit card" as my search terms.

yea it's a busy term. we just came out of stealth so it will take us a little to climb up the search rankings. (part of the tradeoffs you are making when picking a company name.) https://www.meettally.com/

well, here's the tally careers page

https://www.meettally.com/careers

Re: Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage

#20

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this looks like a business with massive downside risk and very little upside. It's bundling a bunch of bad debt (nobody who manages their money well is going to pay 20% interest if they have better options) and hoping that the aggregate is less risky. I have a feeling we've seen that sort of wishful thinking about debt before. So what am I missing that makes Tally so good at mana…

we are planning to be pretty good about managing our risk :) but more importantly credit card debt isn't "bad debt" at all. most folks think that. there is about $700B of credit card debt of which about half is held by large pensions funds etc. and none of that paper defaulted in the financial crises.
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