Vota

Vota

Share places you go when swiping your credit card πŸ’³πŸ“

2 followers

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Check into places anytime you swipe your card -- no need to open the app. See what loved ones are up to today, and comment on their activity. Get personalized recommendations from people you trust. Spot card fraud in seconds and better budget. Created by the app developers behind the world's first "indoor GPS" iPhone app.
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Launch tags:Androidβ€’iOSβ€’Fintech
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What do you think? …

Primer
Songbox
I think I may be having a dose of β€œold man syndrome” (I’m in my 30s) but why on earth would anyone want this? It seems to me like an online paper trail of where i am, what i’m doing and what i’m spending. Is your main investor the NSA?
Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
@mickc79 I guess, why share anything online at all? One notable difference is that this app is not public (Insta) or semi-public (FB) - it's purely private and intended for close friends and family. @kiyo for instance set his dad up with it so he can keep tabs on him (he's retired in another city) and make sure he's still active through the week.
Primer
Songbox
@kiyo @nfarina well to me β€œwhy share anything online at all?” Is a valid question, so clearly this product just isn’t for me. However the use case about making sure an elderly relative is pretty cool and I can understand that. I just hope the elderly relative is fine with having His or her every move tracked.
Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
@kiyo @mickc79 I get the sentiment, having quit most social networks myself. Kiyo's dad likes it, funny enough ... when we would take the system down for upgrades, he would ping us right away asking why his alerts weren't working. I'm also late 30s πŸ‘΄πŸΌ
Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
Hi! Kiyo and I created Vota originally to live vicariously through each other and keep in touch since we live in different states. We thought it was pretty cool how the places we went could be shared with each other without having to do any work. Plus it’s just incredibly useful to get real-time spending notifications (we’ve even caught a fair amount of fraud already). Our bank support is the biggest challenge right now - we are using a completely different system than pretty much everyone else since we require realtime data to match local places accurately. We have a solid list of banks supported so far that we think will cover at least one card in the wallet of most users. But because this system is so new, we are limiting access in the app and inviting people to try it out in batches. Thanks for reading and we’re happy to answer any questions.
VAT PS
@nfarina @kiyo Nice idea. Who designed your logo? It’s same as one of our product https://love.ly
Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
@kiyo @vat_ps Deciding whose logo to steal was tough for sure. We landed on AirBnb's flipped upside down but yours was a close second.
David Crossan
interesting idea.
Γ–zer DondurmacΔ±oğlu

Have been using the app for several months now as an alpha user. It has turned into a habit that I monitor our spending in real-time notifications on the Apple Watch or on the phone: I expect to know which business charging our family credit card, when, where. Trends are quite useful in finding outliers.

Pros:

Private real-time access to our family's spending

Cons:

Mobile only: might be useful to view/share maps/trends data on the browser

Alex Savic

Interesting concept but would never ever use it. First real-time auto sharing means easy surveillance, and removing any privacy. Why would I check in every place where i swiped the card? But generally the issue is the privacy and sharing the unnecessary info just for imitating google reviews, and also budgeting app. Although it's said on site they don't share the info I really doubt that as of the specifics of the informations that are collected.

Automatic Budgeting = US => Mint, EU => Outbank

Reviews = FB - Google - Yelp - Tweeter Profile :D

Pros:

Style & Simplicity

Cons:

Privacy, Benefits, Data sharing

Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
I guess I wouldn't conclude myself that because some functions are covered in other apps, that those features are "done" and implemented as best as they could. For instance, Mint is great and I use it occasionally but it's not realtime, and categorization is entirely up to you (β€œRename WHLFDS to Whole Foods every time?”) The Yelps of the world are great but they are mostly reviews from strangers (or the competing restaurant across the street). Vota is nice because you can get recommendations from places your actual friends actually spend money at. Without them having to sit down and write reviews.
Fletcher Fowler
What technology are you using for realtime auth?
Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
@fzf You're gonna hate this answer but that's the ONE technical thing I can't really divulge because it's extremely…groan…"proprietary". Happy to share any other under the hood stuff though.
Andrew Montague
@fzf @nfarina I assume it's Plaid for the bank connection. Which 3rd party are you using for location/merchant?
Nick Farina
Vota
Maker
@fzf @def_montague Not Plaid. That wouldn't be much of a secret! For place matching we use a mix of Google Places and our own DB.
Fletcher Fowler
@nfarina @def_montague looks like it uses scraping to add a real-time auth notification to an email address, at least for Chase.