VitraCash Updates (27/05/22)

[Dane]

VitraCash Updates - 27 May 2022

Hi all!

This post is fully loaded with app updates, so put your seat belt on, and let’s begin!

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This has been another busy, and auspicious week for Vitracash. The eagle eyed may have noticed we had a couple of releases; in the first we added the last requirement for go-live (the addition of T&Cs, boring but a must I’m afraid).

After the release we tried on-boarding as real customers and asked some family and close friends to try out the app. Unfortunately we found a navigation bug and noticed some minor discrepancies with the design. Needless to say they were resolved quickly with Wednesday’s release.

Now for the bit we’ve all been waiting for: when can you use your Vitracard?

Well, being a slightly pedantic Product Owner I want to use the card myself for a few transactions as final proof of readiness. I received my very own Vitracard today, so I’ll either be celebrating this evening, or owe my local publican!

But I’m sure it will work, which will set us up nicely to enable transactions for the first 50 Vitracash investors next Tuesday: 31st of May (I was determined to let customers use Vitracash before the end of May, and we will make it by the skin of our teeth!)

We will contact you via the forum/email to let you know when you can use your Vitracard.

When we come back from the Jubilee Weekend we will review those customer’s experiences, and assuming they go to plan, we will open transactions for the rest of the UK. We will look to roll out to Europe a week or two after, by which time I hope we will have a complete list of second round investors from CrowdCube we can send invitation codes to.

All of this is very exciting and by pure coincidence (honest!) coincides with Vitracash’s appearance on the Austrian version of Dragons Den next Tuesday, 31st of May! That’s right, you can see our very own @Koray and @Florian sell the virtues of Vitra to some hard nosed investors. I won’t spoil the ending (I haven’t seen it myself) so you’ll have to watch to find out how they got on (possibly with a translator, it is in German afterall).

We expect to see an influx of Austrian users as a result, so we will not have a regular release next week to ensure maximum stability of the app as we set transactions live. We will resolve any bugs if we discover any, though. Releases will resume the following week as usual.

What might you see in the next release now that the app is done I hear you ask?

Well, the app is far from done, we have big big plans we continue to build towards.

Right now we are developing improved error handling, push notifications and changing passwords in app (for which @Ryan thanks us a lot).

On the roadmap we have Open Banking integrations with all the wonderful analytics you could expect, contactless payments management, statements, a referral scheme, an Onboarding rework and continued expansion across new markets and banking partners.

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I’m sure everyone is as excited as I am to finally be here, on the cusp of a launch.

If you have a comment, question or reaction, you know what to do

Have a great weekend!

~Dane

[Matt_Lester]

Wonderful update. Congratulations to you and the team for such hard work.

[Kastello]

Great news, can’t wait to use my card again and super much luck that everything goes smoothly!

[Trojan_ere]

That’s great news.

On the app front I’m still not able to order a card.

[Alex_Davis]

That’s great news!
Obviously the focus has been on the bugs, but out of interest, at what point do you think you’ll look at the requested feature additions and requests.

Know from experience with startups, that the further down the line with coding, the harder it can be to go back and implement certain changes. Many like a ‘dark mode’ may be fairly simple.

[Dane]

Hi Alex,
The goal has been to get the app in to a stable and feature complete (enough) state that we can set it live for investors. Once the app is out there and being used we will focus on requested features and respond to user behaviour before working on new larger features.
So the short answer is: very soon!

That’s the good news.
Unfortunately during testing this weekend I encountered a few bugs with payments that I’m not quite happy to release to users. Most of them were small enough, but the big one was when I assigned a specific card to be used, a different card was charged. In theory this is easy to fix, but naturally I want/need to test the extent of the bug and solution before I’m happy for you to get your hands on it.

I’m really sorry for the delay everyone. Testing real transactions in the wild is very hard, sometimes you’ve just got to do it yourself, which is why this bug was spotted so late in the day. This is the top of our priorities to fix; it will be done this week, deployed next week and the app opened to users.

Thank you all for your continued patience.

[aaronsmithb]

Thanks for the update Dane,

The coding ignoring a basic instruction/rule doesn’t sound great. Best of luck with the rest of the coding

[Dane]

I spoke to the guys, they know what happened. It’s due to some of the refactors we’ve been carrying out lately.
So the fix is easy, but we are going to dedicate time to refactoring/reviewing all of the payments logic to make sure it’s working as expected. We will take some more time to test payments ourselves while we do this. I’m still dedicated to opening transactions to users next week (although I’m on annual leave Monday and Tuesday while I move house, so it may be Wednesday/Thursday we message people).

[joaomcvieira]

Anyone has any update about the pitch on Dragons Den?
How did it go?
Anyone invested?

[Ryan]

I’ll be putting a link out later today to the video!

[joaomcvieira]

Thanks, but i was thinking about a little summary, as i don’t understand german. Unless it has english subtitles…

[Sladen]

Hopefully your not forgetting to post the link cannot wait. As I speak German I could offer a short summary once I watched it.

[Cpt]

Link:

Vitracash im Pitch

[Sladen]

They wanted 200k and expected to be valued at 16mil.
None of the investors were interested because they did not make it clear that there is a high barrier of entry.
They said that they should come back once the product is proven and the patent granted.

My opinion:
They should not have valued themselves at this price and ask conservative investors for money. I think in Germany and Austria 4mil would be more realistic. 16 is quite an American valuation.
I think they should stick to it and grow the userbase then they will grow into such a valuation even for the European markets ;).
And honestly I think they should try to diversify in areas where they can gather knowledge about spending habits. For example a price comparison company etc.

[Samel]

transaction news? everything is fine? when will we be able to use the card in Europe?

[Ben_Barker]

Plan for never, any time sooner is then a bonus

[robstaaaar]

I’ve not been on for a while so just catching up on the chat;
re: “…I think they should try to diversify in areas where they can gather knowledge about spending habits. For example a price comparison company etc.” - Monva (another Crowdcube-er) tried this and went belly up a few months ago, citing ‘current trading conditions, market uncertainty and lack of customer churn’. I say we (VC) should get the basics sorted, iron out the bugs, work on improving the product for release and getting consistent user satisfaction.

I’ve been patiently waiting for my card for 6+ months now so still unable to provide investor/user critical feedback; I won’t be hassling the team for now as I can see the shift they’ve been endlessly putting in to set things right.

That said, I do agree with your overall sentiment

[Trojan_ere]

Same here… still waiting for mine. Not able to order.

[Sladen]

Monva was exactly what I was thinking about.
In my opinion that is something that should be explored.

[Flash22]

Sorry to bother but, is there any news about transactions? How is it going? @Ryan @Dane