Debt Management Start-Up Tally to Expand Beyond Credit Card Service in 2019
*By Tanaya Macheel*
Tally is on track to expand its product offering in 2019, Cheddar has learned.
The automated debt management start-up, which launched in October 2017 and [raised $25 million](https://cheddar.com/videos/credit-card-payoff-app-tally-raises-25-million) in Series B funding in July, is now managing about $250 million in credit card debt and has processed more than $100 million in payments, CEO and founder Jason Brown told Cheddar Monday.
“With 2019 ahead of us, we’re laying the foundation for being able to automate beyond credit card debt,” Brown said, potentially referring to savings and investing, or other kinds of debt like student and auto loans.
With its existing app, the San Francisco-based company aims to remove the pain of managing credit card payments by letting users link their credit cards ー and paying off those credit cards on behalf of their users.
Once users qualify, Tally offers a low-rate line of credit that users pay monthly; that payment covers the minimums on each linked credit card.
Since July, Tally has tripled its headcount, launched its app for Android devices, and released a “robo-advisor for debt” that considers users’ current spending, income, debt to date, and helps them structure a monthly payment plan in order to be debt-free by the date they've chosen.
“Most people think about investing, setting a date for when you’ll retire,” Brown said. “Only about 14 percent of Americans actively buy stocks whereas 44 percent of Americans have credit card debt. We built a product that allows you to set a goal for when you’re going to be debt free.”
Tally currently has about 75 employees, half of whom are engineering and product personnel. The company plans to have 100 employees by the first quarter of 2019.
It also plans to expand its current prime offering. Tally is only available to creditworthy users (those with at least a 660 credit score).
With fintech, traditional financial institutions are doing more financial work for consumers in an “invisible and ambient” way as their brands lose customer interaction to start-ups like Tally, which are employing artificial intelligence to optimize each financial task and separating the benefits of financial responsibilities from the burden.
“Those fintechs will be effectively doing business on the customer’s behalf with the broader financial industry,” Brown said.
“Most banks are organized by product categories, things that you kind of pick off the shelf as a customer. We think about things in terms of jobs you need done. It’s more around goals and objectives as a customer — and the service might use multiple products on your behalf without you even knowing what products are being utilized to get you to your goal.”
Earnings season continues in the week of December 6 - 10, and that's only the start of a slate of events on the calendar that may move markets. We will also see executives from the crypto world and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri testify before members of Congress, and Square's name change to Block officially goes into effect.
Joe Gagliese, Co-Founder and CEO of Viral Nation, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses how influencer marketing is coming to cryptocurrencies and NFTs and outlines what we could expect to see on that front in 2022.
Many restaurants across the country have lately turned off delivery and online orders during peak hours, as eateries are still struggling with labor shortages and as many are also seeing more customers return for in-person dining. Wall Street Journal reporter Heather Haddon joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Hologram communication platform maker PORTL is looking to take communication to the next level. Founder and CEO David Nussbaum joined Cheddar to talk about the company's recent $12 million Series A funding round that will be used to bring the concept of holoportation to market. Nussbaum noted his hologram technology is just not comparable to augmented reality or virtual metaverses because the image projection is happening in real-time and in actual reality. "Well, unlike VR or AR, we're 'R.' We're real. You don't need a headset. You don't need wearables. You don't need to download anything. It's incredible," he said.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stopped by Cheddar's "Between Bells" to talk about his Birth of Wikipedia auction at Christie's putting two items linked to the origins of Wikipedia up for sale. On the auction block are his original strawberry iMac that was used to create the long-running online encyclopedia and what Wales described as an interactive NFT of his first Wikipedia edit rather than a static image. "Once it's been sold, the owner can turn it on, and anyone can edit the page and it will be reflected in the NFT," he said.
Local Bounti rang the opening bell December 3 in honor of its recent trading debut on the NYSE after closing a $1.1 billion SPAC deal. The company operates an indoor growing facility in Montana and aims to transform the production and delivery of local, fresh and sustainably-grown leafy greens. Craig Hurlbert, co-founder and co-CEO of Local Bounti, joined Cheddar to discuss the company's goals as a newly publicly-traded company.
Karen Worstell, Senior Cybersecurity Strategist at VMware, joins ChedHER to discuss the biggest trends and threats in cybersecurity going into 2022, and advice for women in the cybersecurity and tech industries.
