Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity: There use to only be three or four ways to use currency. You either had to pay with cash, write a check, or slide your credit card at places. With today’s technological advances there are now many more innovative ways to pay for things. There have been apps such as apple pay, venmo, snapchat, etc. Though there are more ways to pay for things this brings the complication of keeping all of your information safe. In 2014 there was around 31.8 million cases of credit card fraud which is three times the amount in 2013. I believe this has to do with the increasing amount of ways to spend currency. This number alone shows the number of people that could benefit from an app like mine. The fact there can be a limit on the card and not have to physically have it with you can help decrease the number of credit card scams occurring. Most of these frauds do occur online but still about 15% happen from lost cards and credit card skimming. The fact you don’t have to physically have your card to pay at places can help prevent you from losing your card on a night out or getting it skimmed at sketchy bars or restaurants. Consumers are beginning to see this trend and begin to look for safer forms of payment. No form of payment will ever be 100% safe for consumers, however my app will greatly reduce the risk as well as the financial impact of a credit card scammer. With this enormous amount of consumers being victims to credit card fraud every year I would say there is huge potential for my app to be successful. If I could even capture 1% of the people effected it would give me a customer base of around 30,000 people which will make my app more desired to advertise on and create great revenue for me. This window of opportunity will remain open for as long as people need to spend money.

Innovation: CardBlock will be an app that allows people to put a limit on how much they can spend on their card on one night at multiple different places. Whether the customer is going out to a bar, going on a date to the movies, or even out of the country on a vacation they will be able to electronically budget their spending habits. The customer will be able to pick the desired locations they plan on going to and then set up the amount they plan to spend there and will not allow them to go over budget. This app will also alert the consumer after every transaction and tell them the percentage of the limit they have already used. These constant alerts keep people aware of how much they are spending and do not get carried away. This app will be 1.99 to download which if I got the projected 1% on people in need of an app like this one that will generate around $60,000. After that I will allow advertising space on the app which will be how I get constant revenue after the app has been downloaded. There will be short advertisements in the beginning while users are signing into their accounts and little banners of advertisements posted around the site while users are navigating through it.

Venture Concept: My innovation is set out to help make a form of payment that gives consumers the flexibility and convenience of a credit card but the limitations of cash. When cash is involved you can only spend up to the amount on you. With credit cards people can make large payments on cars, houses, bar tabs etc. without actually having that amount of money in their bank accounts. This app will make your money more secure because it cannot be lost or stolen from you like cash or a card can. Yes the phone the app is on can be stolen, however due to a fingerprint or passcode lock, nobody except the owner can use their money. Also it will help with spending too much money foolishly on a night out or while getting caught up in the moment on vacations, shopping adventures, etc.

My number one resource will be my communication skills. When dealing with money people tend to shy away from using third party services like my app. People want to use more “secure” ways of payment that may come from banks or other financial institutions. I believe my use of good communication skills will help me make my customers feel safer when trusting my app with their money. Once they are convinced they will voice their opinions to their peers who trust them, therefore helping my app grow in popularity.

The next thing I would like to tackle is making this form of payment more convenient for my consumers. I will need to be able to get local businesses on board first and then branch out to larger corporations to allow my app to be used in their stores.

In the next five years after this launch I would like to use my profit earned from this first app and invest it into other startup companies and local entrepreneur’s ideas. I would like to have a small department of employees who continually run maintenance on my app and keep it up to date. However I do not like remaining on one project for a long period of time and would hope to move on to “the next big thing”.