Clinkle Treats Prepaid Rewards Debit Card – Loadable With Credit + Debit

Treats is a new prepaid rewards debit card with a bit of a twist that is offered by Clinkle, who have raised over $30 million in venture capital (funding coming from Richard Branson, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Index). The treats prepaid card works like most prepaid cards, you can add funds to it via your regular bank account and then spend those funds as you normally would. You can also easily send money to other treats/clinkle users.

clinkle treats

Rewards Program

The rewards program is much different than usual though, when you swipe your treat card seven times you fill the rewards meter which unlocks a treat. You can then send those treats to your friends who are also using the service, when your friend swipes their card they are able to open the treat.

Once you open the treat, it’ll will let you know if you’ve received a refund on your last purchase. In some cases it’ll refund the full amount, whereas in other cases it will refund a portion of your last swipe or no refund at all. You can’t open your own treats, so there really isn’t any rewards program unless you have other friends using the card.

In some cases instead of receiving a refund on your last purchase, you’ll receive a freebie. Here are some of the freebies we’ve seen people report:

  • Free chipotle

treat card

Fees

The home page of Clinkle proudly displays that they are not into fees. That said they do charge fees and don’t exactly make it easy to see what fees they do charge. It’s buried at the end of their cardholder agreement. Here are some of the fees they charge:

  • $10 card reissue fee
  • $5 document request fee
  • $1 ATM withdrawal fee ($2 if international)
  • $1 ATM balance inquiry fee ($2 if international)
  • $1 ATM decline fee ($2 if international)
  • 3% foreign currency exchange fee
clinkle home page

Homepage of clinkle.com

Loading Your Account

You can load as little as $0.01 and as much as $2,500, although this varies based on the funding source. You can have a maximum of $10,000 on your account at any one time and the maximum you can spend per day is $2,500.

  • ACH Transfer: No fee and you can load up to twenty times per day and $2,500 per load
  • Debit card: 50¢ up to $1,500 per transaction and $5,000 per any 60-day period (note: you’ll be charged at credit card rates if you use a debit card that is exempt from federal standards hat apply to the interchange fee paid by merchants. You will be told about this before you load)
  • Credit card: 2.9% + 30¢ up to $1,500 per transaction and $5,000 per any 60-day period

You cannot send checks or money orders to load the account. Keep in mind that this product is issued by Bankcorp, so the chances of shut down are pretty high if you use it for manufactured spending purposes.

Signing Up

You cannot sign up for Treats/Clinkle directly, at the moment you must have an .edu e-mail address and have to join a wait list (which is currently 150,000+ people long). To join the wait list, you must download the application first.

Referral Program

They also offer a referral program, if you refer a friend you’ll receive a $10 bonus and they will also receive a $10 bonus. Unfortunately you still need to join the wait list, even if you have a referral code. You might be able to jump the wait list by sending them an e-mail. People have had the most success simply asking where to input their friends referral code to jump the wait list.

Thanks to blackcomedy from reddit.com/r/beermoney via Maximizing Money for making me aware of this referral program. Blackcomedy’s referral code is CQUX477 so you might want to consider using that, feel free to share your referral ID in the comments but you must let us know how many treats you’ve opened and what you received.

Final Thoughts

I can’t sign up to this service because I don’t have an .edu e-mail address. If I did have an address, I probably would sign up as long as I could ensure it was a soft pull to open an account. It should be fairly easy to game getting 7 debit card transactions without making large purchases, but it will be interesting to see if Clinkle ties the value of the reward to how much you spent on each individual transaction or not.

If you have any personal experience with Clinkle/Treats, then please share them in the comments. As mentioned previously, you can share your referral codes but make sure you also share some useful information as well otherwise I will delete your posts.

 

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Chantell
Chantell (@guest_97081)
March 31, 2015 19:06

I’ve had my card for about a week now and love it!

Easy $10 if you use code WRTL526

Brock
Brock (@guest_94301)
March 26, 2015 23:20

I didn’t use a edu email and I’m a college student but I just used my normal email and I signed up people with normal emails and so far i have 100 buck in my account from referrals which ends April 1. My code is RTAP456
Is this for reals? If so
I’m about to spend the next 4 days promoting this company I bet I could sign 200
Ppl up

chantell
chantell (@guest_87973)
March 13, 2015 13:27

I just signed up today. My referral code is WRTL526. I’ll let you know how it goes once I unlock my treat!

VTIVX
VTIVX (@guest_88288)
March 14, 2015 15:36

Thanks! Just used your code and got $10 confirmation. Here’s mine if anyone is interested – only good until March 31st: NQUR799

steven
steven (@guest_79246)
February 20, 2015 06:51

My referral code is NFES267

I go to college and heard about this app from some klinkle reps on campus. Seems like a very interesting app and I’ve gotten 2 treats so far. Theklinkle reps also had a vending machine full of $10 bills. If you sent it $0.01 it would give you $10 one time. It was very interesting marketing and im excited to see where this app ends up going.

vinay
vinay (@guest_77272)
February 16, 2015 18:18

Hi my referral code is : QKSJ868

Please use it to get 10$. I have opened 3 treats till now. First one was purchase waive off. The next two were just extra swipes each.

Star
Star (@guest_73792)
February 11, 2015 01:41

Used Blackcomedy’s referral code and got immediate access thanks to my college email address that stays with you for life (thanks UC system!). 🙂

My referral code is GENB245 and expires on April 1, 2015. You get $10 for signing up with a code, which you enter after you create a profile, and the person whose code you used also gets $10.

I got one treat, which I have not been able to open yet since my card has not arrived yet. Identity was verified immediately. I used my Google Voice number with my real birthday/SSN/address/etc.

Star
Star (@guest_73795)
February 11, 2015 01:46

Not sure I’m digging the app design/sound effects yet despite how modern they are, but one thing that I found slightly creepy was that when you click the happy face to “Give a Treat to…”, the screen changes to a text field where you type in someone’s name, but the background is a blurred live video feed from your front-facing camera — aka YOU. So you can see your head moving, albeit everything is blurred out.

Interestingly, this screen gives you the option to add your address book, but then when I type in names from my address book after giving it permission to access my contacts, I couldn’t find any of my friends. So where did my address book go in the app?! :S

R.
R. (@guest_76088)
February 14, 2015 23:04

@Star
I think that sending a Treat to someone must include a selfie. The list you see in probably the list of all Treats cardholders, not your addressbook. Maybe if one of them is also in your addressbook they are displayed first?

BTW, the most important thing about Treats is that you can see the value of your Treats at https://www.treatsapp.co/your-treats so you know what you’re getting.

If someone wants my referral code, it is YMQJ478.

PD
PD (@guest_72796)
February 9, 2015 11:37

As prominsed I am back to report my use of the card. I have used the card two times so far – both are 4ish dollar charge. The first charge was autometically refunded to me showing that I have redeemd a treat. The second charge was a regular charge deducted from my card balance.

Melanie :D
Melanie :D (@guest_72564)
February 9, 2015 00:31
Val Lee
Val Lee (@guest_71929)
February 8, 2015 01:43

Please keep the referral cycle going and use my code: YSRC236. Thanks!

anthony
anthony (@guest_68641)
January 31, 2015 21:56

this is backed by Bancorp which is shut down territory after $20K of MS.