November 2010
Case
HBS Case Collection

Bling Nation

Format:Print
| Pages:26

Abstract

Bling Nation, a Palo Alto, CA startup, was founded in 2007 as a mobile payment service provider that bypassed industry participants such as Visa and MasterCard. Bling Nation partnered with local community banks and merchants in small towns. The banks provided their consumers with Bling Nation “tags”—microchip stickers that could be placed on any mobile phone device. The tags allowed users to make payments directly from their checking accounts and functioned similarly to a debit card. While Bling Nation had already raised $33 million, and its founders were confident of the market potential for mobile payments, they recognized the challenges they faced in scaling their current business model.