Subscribe
Sign in
Slash
p/slash-3Shared cards to split subscriptions, spend with friends
Start new thread
Michael Seibel

Slash - Shared cards to split subscriptions, spend with friends

by•

With Slash, issue joint cards that you and your friends “co-own.” Spend a fraction of what you otherwise would on subscriptions by seamlessly splitting costs with friends.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
Thanks @mwseibel for the hunt! Slash co-founders, Victor and Kevin here! We started Slash as an answer to the ridiculous number of streaming, music, news, and other subscriptions services that have popped up, each offering their own silos of exclusive content Our goal is to make digital content more accessible to everyone, which benefits both consumers and businesses. The former via cost savings, and the latter by acquiring customers that otherwise wouldn’t have purchased their service (RIP Quibi!). Besides helping you split subscription costs without the hassle, Slash cards are also great for: 1. Sticking the finger to free trials! When prompted for a card on a free trial, simply pull up Slash, create a card with a limit of $1, and never worry about getting billed for a subscription later on. 2. Simplify your shared finances. Instead of adding shared expenses to spreadsheets and bill splitting apps, Slash allows you to pay for utilities, pizza nights, shared groceries, and everything in between with a shared card. We'd love to hear from you! Hit us up with any feedback, questions, or suggestions of how you would use a product like this. We care deeply about your experience and are always looking for ways to improve. Reach out to victor@joinslash.com and kevin@joinslash.com.
Eugene Hauptmann
Nice start! What’s your chargeback policy?
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@eugenehp Hi Eugene! In the case where you can't get a merchant to reverse or refund an unwanted transaction, we resolve issues on a case by case basis up to 60 days after a transaction has posted. We request you provide as much information about the unwanted transaction (e.g: were you overcharged? do you not recognize it at all? have you already contacted the merchant?) and then work with our banking provider and the merchant to resolve your dispute. Hope that helps!
tommyent
@victorcc how is this different if at all from Privacy?
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@tommyent Hey Tommy! Our emphasis is on letting users share expenses using these cards. Yes, we let you issue virtual cards, but the beauty is we let you use them to auto-split costs (i.e: if you use it to buy something that costs $10 and there are 2 owners on a card, we take $5 for one of the "co-owners" and $5 from one of the other "co-owners")
Robin
?makers I think it's really great what you're doing, but how do you deal with the problem of possible violations of the TOS of the providers (Spotify, Netflix, etc.)? As a general rule, such accounts are personal and should not be shared according to the TOS. Spotify, for example, is increasingly taking action against such violations. This is especially the case with family accounts, but also with normal accounts. Spotify's TOS (Family): "In order to be eligible for the Premium Family Subscription, the primary account holder and the subsidiary account holders must be family members residing at the same address." Thanks for your great work and all the best from Zurich, Robin
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@robinkunz Hi Robin! Great questions and ones we think about all the time. First of all, cost splitting within your household is totally possible and the use case we encourage the most! Our terms explicitly encourage our users to consult the TOS of the services they plan to cost-split before using Slash cards. Will there be cases of people using Slash cards to cost-split subscriptions with people outside their household? Probably, but we don't wholly condone it. On the other hand, you're totally right that on paper the largest of these subscription services view password sharing pretty disfavorably, but our bet is that it's pretty unlikely that most of them will crack down on cost-splitters, as they depend on these users to keep their service afloat! In fact, we believe enabling very seamless splitting will actually be a net positive for most smaller services who will acquire users that otherwise wouldn't have purchased their service.
Robin
@victorcc Thanks for the fast & detailed response :) Have a great day
Subhendu
I was thinking of a similar idea. How about just buy the part you really want to watch? I mean, I don't even watch much but I am still paying for the subscription.
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@thisissubhendu Hello! That sounds very interesting, right now we're laser focused on just making cost-splitting as seamless as possible via "fractional ownership" of subscriptions. What exactly do you mean by just "buying the part you really want to watch"?
Rohan Ramanath
@victorcc You currently support equal cost-splitting right? I think @thisissubhendu is referring to usage based cost-splitting. For example if there are two users sharing a Spotify account and one streams 90 hours of music while the other streams 10 hours, they should split the cost 90:10
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@thisissubhendu @rohanramanath Ah! Gotcha, that seems like a super interesting use case. One thing we have in the pipeline is letting users determine what percent of the spend of a given card each "co-owner" of a card is responsible for (i.e: I pay 40% of this Netflix card and my two other co-owners each pay 30%). Making this splitting be usage based sounds interesting, though! Appreciate the feedback.
Subhendu
@rohanramanath @victorcc of course! I have more crazy ideas around it. But we both get a goodie soon for this? 😛
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@rohanramanath @thisissubhendu of course! Would love to talk to both of you more 1:1, please feel free to dm me on Twitter (at)victorcardenas or write me an email victor (at) joinslash.com !!
Guillermo Perez
When will it available for Europe? ✊🏿😎🔥
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@guillermo_perez hopefully soon! The only reason we're US only right now is because we depend on Plaid 100% for our bank connections 😅. No definitive date but promise you it's on our roadmap 🙌
Rohan Ramanath
?makers Great start. A few questions: * Your current offering supports a few services (streaming / subscription) out of the box - what technical or business challenges do you see in expanding this to generic virtual cards that can be used for any purpose. A few example use cases are (a) a group of friends traveling together and want to split the trip expenses should be allowed to create a virtual card for the trip than can be used across vendors, (b) couples for house hold expenses. * What is the underlying instrument you use to implement the virtual card? Is there a way to implement it without requiring SSN from the users. Does every user have to go through this setup? That would help simplify user onboarding.
Kevin Bai
Maker
@rohanramanath Hey Rohan, great questions! Our cards actually are generic virtual (debit) cards, which you can set a limit on and spend anywhere. As part of onboarding, we suggest some common use-cases to help kick-start the process. The example use cases that you mentioned can definitely be used with Slash cards, but by default, we do an equal split amongst everyone sharing the card (so uneven splitting and excluding people from certain transactions aren't currently possible). We're definitely looking to explore and better support these use cases in the future. We currently issue virtual Visa cards with our banking-as-a-service provider which partners with Blue Ridge Bank. Unfortunately, since we're connecting to user bank accounts and letting them spend money through our platform, we need to comply with US KYC policies. You can read a bit more about this on our blog: https://www.joinslash.com/blog/s....
Aleks Bochkov
Genius idea! Congrats 🚀
Sebastien Gagnon
When will it be available for Canadians?
Kevin Bai
Maker
@sebastien_gagnon1 Hopefully soon! I'm a Canadian and would love to see the product used here in Canada as well!
Fawad Ahmed
@sebastien_gagnon1 @kevinbai0 I second this. I've been waiting for something similar to Privacy in Canada and this could be it!
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
Hello hello! Having issues with Twilio/Sendgrid right now and can't send verification emails for some reason 😱. Scrambling to fix but shouldn't be long before everything is up and running again. Sorry for the inconvenience!!
Seb Jachec
Is there any restriction on the countries supported (is this US-only)? Couldn't seem to spot a mention of this, but might have missed something
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@iamsebj Hi Seb! Unfortunately we are US only right now. Looking to launch in European countries soon though. No specific timeline in mind but promise to let you know when we do :)
CARLO ALEXEI
This seems really cool. Can see a lot of use cases for rooommates.
Kevin Bai
Maker
@carlosilva definitely see roommates as the main audience for this product! Looking into more powerful features when it comes to living shared expenses in the near future
Doron Segal
This is awesome idea !
Sarrah
This is cool! Reminds me a bit of Braid. You should target college students. They'd be all over this.
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@sarrah Thanks Sarrah! Both Kevin and I are actually in college ourselves, so most definitely :)
Bogdan Ionita
fun & definitely useful for real life situations
Yehoshua Zlotogorski
?makers this is awesome!!! Do users decide which apps to use this for or are these partnerships you're cultivating with subscription services?
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@yehoshua_zlotogorski Hello Yehoshua! You can create a card to use literally anywhere, and don't actually need to share it with anyone, we just give you the option of adding a limit on it to prevent overspending and sharing it with a couple buddies to automatically split costs. We do, however, let you link the card to the subscription of your choice in a couple clicks (redirect you to Netflix's payment details page, for example)!
Yehoshua Zlotogorski
@victorcc super cool, beyond being a user myself, this might be an interesting angle to add to the subscription service we offer @Alpe Audio - I'd love to enable group buying for students it's just not so simple and this might solve that!
Bulut Akışık
how were you able to issue cards? are you using a payment platform in the back?
Kevin Bai
Maker
@bulut_jotform Yep! We're partnering with a BaaS (banking-as-a-service) provider to issue Visa cards.
Archit Kaushik
Looks amazing .
Alexa Bliss
@victorcc Thanks for the fast & detailed response Have a great day www.hdshop.ga
Patrick Thompson
Could this work with shared cell phone bills?
Kevin Bai
Maker
@zerodrek yeah! As long as you pay your cell phone bill with a card, you can switch your current payment method to a Slash card instead.
Dul Zorigoo
Brilliant idea @victorcc , feels like a lot of people will find this product super helpful! What do you think of companies like Netflix, who starting to make efforts to prevent people from sharing accounts? Do you think more and more companies will try to take steps to prevent people from sharing subscriptions?
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@dulzorigoo That's a great point and one we think about a lot, Dul! Netflix definitely is at a stage where they can start to crack down on this sort of activity because they're gargantuan. Our hypothesis is that it's actually not in the interest of most "smaller" providers (Peacock, HBO, etc) to take such a negative view on account sharing, as it lets them target a group of people that otherwise wouldn't have purchased their service. Hope that clears things up and let me know what you think of the product when you try it out!
Gaby Goldberg
Congratulations on the launch!! Can't wait to try this out!
Victor Daniel Cardenas
Maker
@gaby_goldberg Thank you so much Gaby! Always appreciate your support