WAYN pimps credit card to users
February 6 Mike Butcher

Social travel network WAYN is to offer a branded pre-pay credit card financed by Tuxedo Money Solutions. The card will be available to its 10.8m users who often start out as backpackers. VIP members will get the WAYN Lifestyle Card for free as part of their membership package, others will have to pay £9.95. Clearly WAYN will get a cut every time someone signs up to the card. This isn’t such a bad idea - why doesn’t Facebook do it? You could earn reward points for poking people, or something…
Meanwhile it looks like I was may have gone for the wrong startup when I wrote in January that AOL was about to buy WAYN. WAYN is backed by VCs DFJ Espirit, who also just sold buy.at to AOL. So it looks like either the information I was passed fingered the wrong startup, or AOL really was interested in a DFJ portfolio company, but took buy.at instead of WAYN. Either way, WAYN is still around, presumably waiting for the right buyer.
Hey ho, you win some, you lose some…


Comments
February 6th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Exactly!
Great to see how busy you are at the moment Mike- keep up the good work!
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February 6th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Suspect the credit card is there to encourage people to spend their dosh through WAYN’s newish members shopping system. Powered by buy.at. And AOL offer a similar card on their UK shopping site. Nice and cosey
February 7th, 2008 at 8:23 am
This seems like a great move for WAYN - well done