Multiplayer Fintech — A Year Later

On building a social fintech product, and learning from our first 50,000 Braid Pools.

The premise of multiplayer fintech is simple: money is inherently social, and more software should exist to support this sort of usage. Financial products are adamantly single-player, but a year after our first piece of this topic, this is slowly starting to change. 2021 was a small preview into what’s to come.

What is multiplayer fintech?

Multiplayer fintech refers to products that are designed for multiple users to collaborate in some way around money. The functionality of the product itself must be tied to multi-user use. PartyBid is a great example, while an individual checking account with a referral program wouldn’t qualify. There’s a dearth of collaborative, multiplayer products in fintech and financial services, though collaborative software is a well-established category (Figma, Github, Google Docs, Dropbox, and more).

Lessons from 50,000 Braid Pools

Braid launched on Product Hunt in July 2020 after a small friends and family beta. We designed a money pool — a shared wallet, essentially — that supports multiple users, custom permissions and a pool debit card. Our goal was (and is) to build a new account type designed for multiple users, that can exist alongside joint accounts and business accounts. There’s a whole world of groups, collectives, friends, families, etc. that those two buckets don’t cover.

So far, 50,000 pools have been created using Braid, and we’ve processed tens of millions in payment volume. We’ve learned a lot about social norms related to sharing money, which will be the focus of what we’ll share here. Though we’ve also encountered our share of technical and regulatory challenges, that’s the reality of building financial software, and applies to single-player and multiplayer products all the same. Designing a user experience that is both compelling and compliant is part of the assignment. The social aspect of money, on the other hand, has some very specific implications for anyone working on a multiplayer product.

Here are a few observations :

1. Every pool is different. The creativity and magic we’ve seen show a real need for this sort of product. We’ve seen, just in the past few weeks: a fund for a small Foundation, a shared Discord server, a memorial pool, a treasury for a Pokémon League, gift pools for kids, DAOs, travel funds, savings pledges, families pooling money for eldercare, bands, studio space pools, and more. Every day we’re surprised by new ways that people are using the product. Related aside: we made the decision to change the product name from “group account” to “pool” this year, which helped a lot. Names matter.
2. There is a lot of labor associated with sharing money. The physical and emotional labor associated with collecting and managing money for some shared thing is very real, and it’s often unpaid. If you’ve ever been this person, you know the feeling — the visceral sort of dread that comes with having to collect, reconcile, pay expenses, and keep track of everything. You’ll sometimes spend more and need to collect again. Some people repeat this cycle month after month. Is it really worth it for the credit card points?
3. Fronting money is a huge pain point. This comes up a lot, but many people have come to accept that this is simply how shared expenses work. Fronting money, then tracking the expense and getting reimbursed is a ton of work. Because this behavior is so entrenched it’s been a challenge to show people that there’s another option. Pooling money up front means you can spend directly out of the pooled funds, and you always know how much is left to spend. One Braid member said, “ I switched us over to Braid from a combo of Google Sheets, Splitwise, and a house bank account…[and now there’s] no more reimbursement system for me to manage.”
4. Keeping pooled funds separate from personal funds is important. The person in charge of organizing money on behalf of a group is often forced to transfer funds into their own personal bank account. This creates confusion around what money is personal and what money technically belongs to the group. Having a dedicated place to keep group funds is meaningful.
5. Trust, transparency and safety are paramount. We knew this was important when we started, but the gravity of this has become even clearer over the past year. Signing up for a new financial product is not the same thing as signing up for a new photo app, and ensuring that every new member knows we take safety and security seriously is paramount for us.

Every [X] should have a wallet

Another observation from the past year is that the account structure and offerings within the existing financial system are inflexible and normative. An account must be for an individual, two people (joint account), or a business. But there are so many examples of groups that don’t fit in one of those buckets. This realization has become even more pronounced for us in 2021.

A few months ago someone said, “every classroom should have a wallet.” The idea that an [X], a thing— a classroom, a band, a rental house, a motorcycle enthusiast club — should have its own wallet feels so obvious. And yet, the work required to make this a reality — technical, regulatory, and behavioral in nature — is not trivial. These wallets need to embrace multiple users and transcend any one individual. This is our North Star, and where we want to end up.

The rise of the DAO

DAOs are a great example of an entity that doesn’t cleanly fit in any one legal bucket, and this wouldn’t be a proper piece about multiplayer fintech in 2021 if we didn’t talk about DAOs.

In the past year, the rise of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) has shown the potential of this new type of organization, and watching them evolve and experiment has been a lot of fun. Although DAOs exist mostly in the crypto/web3 world, there is a lot of potential for crossover in 2022 and beyond. For example, what will be the ConstitutionDAO of 2022?

There is so much overlap between DAOs and our work at Braid, because collaboration around money is ultimately a social undertaking, regardless of whether the currency is dollars or crypto. What matters is what these groups can achieve when they pool their resources and time. We’re curious about DAOs and exploring a few tools we might be able to offer to support this growing movement.

Pools in 2022

We’re focused on creating an accessible, fast and simple way to pool money, and that goal will inform our work in 2022. To that end, we want to:

• Add more payment methods to Braid. You should be able to fund a pool with whatever payment method you want — a bank account, debit card, credit card, Paypal, and even crypto.
• Continue to make money movement frictionless and instant. There are real limitations in the current system, both technical and financial, that make this goal especially difficult to achieve. But it’s also the most worthwhile. Fast, frictionless movement of money benefits everyone.
• Explore different pool types. We’ve gotten member feedback around supporting specific types of pools, for saving, investing and crypto. Each of these would be a large undertaking, but we want to eventually support all of these pool types.

Interested in learning more about Braid? We’d love to hear from you, email us at hello@braid.co.

Written in Oakland, CA, December 2021. Special thanks to everyone who provided feedback on the draft.