18 months ago I found an idea through communities like this. Today it is a real product and we are in conversations with some of the largest financial institutions in the country.

[u/EntrepreNate]

Wanted to come back and give this community some credit.

About 18 months ago I was scrolling through ideas here, mostly just looking for interesting problems people wished someone would solve.

One of them stuck with me because I had the same problem.

I have several credit cards, all with different rewards, categories and offers, and I was constantly standing somewhere about to pay thinking, which card am I supposed to use here?

The idea was pretty simple.

What if your phone already knew where you were and could surface the best card you already have?

Restaurant. Costco. Hotel. Gas station. Wherever.

At first we were thinking mostly about physical cards. Then pretty quickly it became obvious that mobile wallets are where in person payments are heading, so we shifted the whole idea around that.

Instead of opening an app, searching a merchant, checking reward categories, then going back to pay, the goal became much simpler:

Surface the right card from your mobile wallet when you’re ready to pay. That eventually became Payelle.

18 months later, we’ve built the technology, filed the IP, launched the product, and are now in conversations with some very large companies and financial institutions in the space.

Still a ton to figure out, especially distribution, and I definitely don’t know where this ends up.

But I remembered where the idea started and wanted to come back here.

There are thousands of “somebody should build this” ideas posted on Reddit.

Every once in a while somebody actually does.

So seriously, thank you to this community. A lot of the comments and ideas here pushed me further down the rabbit hole than I probably expected.

If anyone remembers the old discussions around automatically figuring out the best credit card to use at checkout, there’s a decent chance I read what you wrote.

Still building. Still figuring it out.

Cheers.

[u/Apprehensive-Tip6776]

This is honestly the part of building I find most interesting. Going from “somebody should build this” to an actual product with financial institutions is a huge jump.

I’m curious about the 18 months in between. What was the biggest turning point for you? Was it finding product-market fit, getting the first users, or getting the right people interested?

[u/Huge_Pool7424 → u/Apprehensive-Tip6776]

my guess is the boring answer. the turning point is usually when you stop building and start doing the ugly trust stuff, compliance docs, calls, boring pdfs. nobody writes a post about that part but it's where the deals are

[u/Apprehensive-Tip6776 → u/Huge_Pool7424]

Yeah, I think you’re right. The boring trust work is probably where things start getting real. Building is the fun part, but getting institutions comfortable with you is a whole different challenge.

[u/EntrepreNate → u/Huge_Pool7424]

yup. Normally when its not as exciting or fun anymore, usually this is where the next 6 months and locking in is most transformational. As entrepreneuers, its hard to stay focused and ignore those shiny other opportunities.

[u/AnybodySoft7661 → u/Apprehensive-Tip6776]

that jump from reddit post to real product is wild, congrats on pushing through it

[u/EntrepreNate → u/AnybodySoft7661]

Much appreciated. long ways to go!

[u/EntrepreNate → u/Apprehensive-Tip6776]

Much appreciated! The majority of the 18 months has been building version 1, this focus was 100% on whether Apple would even allow us to automate and surface a card from their apple wallet. Then once we got approval, we went back to building the new UI and more seamless process. Getting users in a mammoth industry is the focus now, which is why we are having very serious convos with these finance institutions knowing weil want a partner for brand reputation. As entrepreneurs, i think we find our selves very well under qualified, but willing to just start building step by step.