Zero fees? Real-time payments?
The inside story on how Daggle works and how we pay the bills…
If you think about it, it’s a bit ridiculous in this day and age that we still cannot move money around from person to person instantly and for free, just like email.
Looking at today’s rapidly changing technology and what’s going on in the banking sector (blockchain! fintech!) we at Daggle believe the whole world is moving towards a real-time payments system with zero transaction fees. It’s inevitable. But instead of waiting for it to happen, we thought we’d skip ahead and just go ahead and do it now.
But why create just another neo-bank (we’re big fans of the Revoluts and Monzos of this world) or develop a new distributed ledger technology (we heart IOTA) when there are already strong leaders in this area?
We thought it would be better instead to demonstrate the power of real-time payments and zero transaction fees through a marketplace — one where you can borrow and lend things — that would let you ‘hack’ the experience of real-time payments by creating your own closed-system economy.
This gave us the exciting prospect of combining two things: the Sharing Economy, which is already booming (AirBnB! Uber!) and the Real-Time Economy, which is just on the cusp of blooming.
It also made a lot of sense for us to focus on a sharing marketplace, as the general zeitgeist of today’s global economy is moving towards buying less and living more, a “shift to thrift” as it’s called, or a move towards the Experience Economy (a third one! we need a Venn diagram!)
So that explains why Daggle is so focused on giving our users a real-time payments experience at zero-fee transaction costs.
The Rub: Real-time payments + zero-fee transactions = nano-payments
Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, a real-time payment is one that moves from one account to another instantly. This in itself is not new. The UK has upgraded its system so now wire transfers can take place almost as soon as you make them.
But they’re not free.
The magic comes in when you make all these instant transfers at zero cost. Once you have that, you can have nano-transactions — very, very small transactions ($0.0001 or smaller) — as moving them around for free makes them economically viable. (There’s no point paying a $10 fee on a $0.0001 payment.)
With nano-transactions, you are now able to start moving money really quickly and efficiently. Today’s existing inefficient payment arrangements, like renting a car by the day when you only need the car for a few hours, or paying for hourly parking when you used it for 10 mins, can be completely transformed.
That’s the Daggle experience. You borrow something and money moves from your account to the owner’s every second based on the agreed price rate (set at “hourly” so that it’s easier to grasp the cost implications). When you return something, the payment has already been made, so there are no disputes over cost or attempts to haggle last minute. And what the borrower pays and the lender receives is absolutely fair and square: exactly for the time the item was borrowed.
So how does Daggle make money?
We want to be as completely aligned with our users as possible, so here’s how it works.
If you are a borrower, we will never charge you anything for using this service. Ever. You can borrow as many or as few items as you like, and so long as you’re able to pay the owner, Daggle will never charge you. (See more about how your account balance works.)
If you are a lender, and you are making money on Daggle, we will charge you a monthly subscription fee. But not just any old subscription fee, but a dynamic monthly subscription fee.
The dynamic monthly subscription fee
Daggle charges lenders only when they make money that month, and the fee depends on how much they make.
If you as a lender don’t make much that month, maybe because you went on vacation or you are just getting started, we charge you zero.
Once you cross a threshold of earnings we will charge you a fee based on which earnings band you fall in for that month (a bit like progressive tax). Each month your fee changes, depending on how well you are doing, which is what makes it dynamic.
In other words, you will never lose money on Daggle, because we will never charge you unless you are making money. How’s that for aligning interests!
We want you to do the best you can and earn as much as you can, because that then lets us charge higher fees and keep the lights on at Daggle.
For the latest on Daggle’s dynamic monthly subscription fees, checkout our subscription fee schedule.
We hope that all makes sense and you see the appeal and benefit of using Daggle’s real-time, zero-transaction fee service. Do let us know if you have any questions, but in the meantime, happy Daggling!
