Video Claims to Offer First Look at Secretive $25 Million App Clinkle

What's This?

By Seth Fiegerman2013-09-30 17:45:47 UTC

Clinkle, a mobile payment startup, has generated plenty of buzz for its app in recent months thanks to a massive $25 million funding round from prominent investors and its decision not to reveal the app to the general public. Now, one anonymous Tumblr account called Clinkler has posted a video which claims to show the app in action.

The video shows Clinkle letting users transfer money to their bank account, connect with multiple credit cards, settle group tabs by sending payments to other users and make payments in stores through a feature called Aerolink. The video doesn't explain the technology behind the last of these payments, but previous reports have suggested Clinkle will rely on a high-frequency sound to enable payments between devices.

Based on the leaks, Clinkle will rely very heavily on a skeuomorphic design: the app includes digital representations of a money clip, leather wallet and ATM dispenser, complete with images of credit cards and dollar bills. Some of this design had been teased in Clinkle's first ad and images on Clinkle's official website.

A rep for Clinkle declined to comment on the authenticity of the video.

In an email, the user behind the Tumblr explained that he or she was "annoyed" by the app's "vague secrecy" and was able to "reverse engineer the app," which is currently available in Apple's App Store, but requires an invitation to use. "I looked in the code and figured out that I could flip a single conditional branch to allow full access to the app," the user said.

Lucas Duplan, the 22-year old founder behind Clinkle, has repeatedly refused to offer up specific details on how the app will work or what makes it different than other mobile payment options on the market. Instead, the startup decided to tease the app with a video spot that shows it being used — very, very briefly.

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"We are not only launching a product, we are creating a movement," Duplan told Mashable in an interview earlier this month. "That's what we are going after." When pressed about whether Clinkle's app will make use of sound to transmit payments, Duplan would say only that "the technology we are using is new and hasn't been used before."

Despite that vagueness — or perhaps because of it — there are now more than 100,000 users queued up to use the app, according to Clinkle, and the plan is to roll it out gradually to select colleges over the next couple months.

Image: Clinkle

Topics: apps, Apps and Software, Business, clinkle, mobile payments, Startups