Skip to main content

Bunq launches metal card and plants a tree for every €100 spent

Fintech startup Bunq is launching a metal card called the Green Card. While some banks offer a cashback program with premium cards, Bunq is offering a special kind of “cashback”. For every €100 spent, Bunq plants a tree. The company has partnered with Eden Reforestation Projects to finance reforestation around the globe.

Manufacturing a metal card isn’t particularly environmentally friendly. That’s why the Green Card expires after six years instead of four years. It is also made of recyclable material (even though I’m not sure it’s that easy to recycle a metal card with a chip, a magnetic stripe and an NFC antenna after it expires).

Other than that, the Green Card works more or less like the Travel Card. While Bunq offers traditional bank accounts, you can order a Travel Card or a Green Card and keep your existing bank account.

The Green Card is a Mastercard without any foreign exchange fee. The company uses the standard Mastercard exchange rate but doesn’t add any markup fee.

While the Green Card is a credit card, it doesn’t work like normal credit cards. You don’t get a direct debit on your bank account once a month to cover your credit line. Instead, you have to open the Bunq app and top up your Bunq account — topping up your account with another card may incur some fees, more details here. If you don’t have enough money on your account, the transaction gets rejected like a debit card.

The Travel Card costs €9.99 to order the card. There’s no monthly fee after that. The Green Card costs €99 per year. Bunq charges €0.99 per ATM withdrawal but you get 10 free withdrawals with the Green Card.

The company is selling a limited edition today with “Founders Edition” engraved in the top right corner but the first batch is nearly sold out:



from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2L004Oy

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thousands of cryptocurrency projects are already dead

Two sites that are actively cataloging failed crypto projects, Coinopsy and DeadCoins , have found that over a 1,000 projects have failed so far in 2018. The projects range from true abandonware to outright scams and include BRIG , a scam by two “brothers,” Jack and Jay Brig, and Titanium , a project that ended in an SEC investigation. Obviously any new set of institutions must create their own sets of rules and that is exactly what is happening in the blockchain world. But when faced with the potential for massive token fundraising, bigger problems arise. While everyone expects startups to fail, the sheer amount of cash flooding these projects is a big problem. When a startup has too much fuel too quickly the resulting conflagration ends up consuming both the company and the founders and there is little help for the investors. These conflagrations happen everywhere are a global phenomenon. Scam and dead ICOs raised $1 billion in 2017 with 297 questionable startups in the mix. The

Dance launches its e-bike subscription service in Berlin

German startup Dance is launching its subscription service in its hometown Berlin. For a flat monthly fee of €79 (around $93 at today’s exchange rate), users will get a custom-designed electric bike as well as access to an on-demand repair and maintenance service. Founded by the former founders of SoundCloud and Jimdo , the company managed to raise some significant funding before launching its service. BlueYard led the startup’s seed round while HV Capital (formerly known as HV Holtzbrinck Ventures) led Dance’s €15 million Series A round, which represented $17.7 million at the time. E-bike subscription service Dance closes $17.7M Series A, led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures The reason why Dance needed so much capital is that the company has designed its own e-bike internally. Called the Dance One, it features an aluminum frame and weighs around 22kg (48.5lb). It has a single speed and it relies on its electric motor to help you go from 0 to 25kmph. And the best part is that you