Tally After 4 Years

The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

Banks play an interesting game with consumers: they decorate credit cards with massive cashback, bonuses, and free miles, spend money on it, and wait for the client to stumble once and miss the payment before the grace period ends. That’s when enormous interest switches on, and it pays off both the cost of the credit itself and the raging promos used by the debtor themselves and a couple of more careful customers.

Tally, the American startup of the day, enters the battle of the side of the person. The user installs the mobile app, connects the cards, and then the startup automatically covers the debts before banks at the expense of credit at Tally. The interest will naturally be considerably lower, – it doesn’t include the expenses of cashback or miles, the silly old bank still pays for the bonuses. That’s it, it’s a win, everybody is happy except for the bankers, there’s nothing more to write about, everything is clear.

The project is still small, it spent USD 24M of investment and brought in 18M more in its recent round. There’s still room to grow, but the company will never grow very big: the fewer clients fall prey to banks’ traps, the less sense there will be in tricks with bonuses, the closer their interest will be to that at Tally.

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This is a rerun from 2018. Tally brought in several big rounds since then and, naturally, grew in turnover. Besides, it became paid – the subscription to cheap credits now costs USD 300 per year. It seems like it wasn’t there originally.