Tred discussion

[Money]

I had hopes for Tred - I almost took part in the fund raising last year.

So now they’ve started charging a membership fee of £2.99, which I wasn’t too happy about, but the deal breaker was the online authentication codes not working - tried to buy stuff from Amazon last night. and the code sent to me was invalid?!

Emailed them to close the account.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

Me too - but the moment they proposed charging for basics I didn’t go any further with them.

I don’t hear many people using them day to day, I think you must be their one customer.

[j06 (Jamie)]

The model obviously doesn’t work for free, so why do we all expect it to be free?

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

That’s true, they have to make money somehow

But I think there’s a difference between charging for additional features ala Monzo Plus/rewards vs Treds model which charges for things such as bank transfers etc.

[NanoOp (I take your calls)]

Spotted in Leeds… City Square.

[bee]

Tred is closing all personal accounts

Hi there,

This is a long email, but please read it in full as it contains important information about your Tred account and money

Tred’s mission is to make money work for people and the planet. To date, this has revolved around offering a tree planting debit card, carbon tracking, green marketplace and offsetting to individuals all in our app. Recently, we’ve been receiving more and more requests for business accounts which will provide the same green banking experience to businesses, plus automate all of their carbon reporting, net zero planning and offsetting

As a small team, we aren’t able to focus on both areas at the same time for now. So we’ve made the tough decision to pause our personal debit card while we focus on offering business accounts.

What does this mean for me?

Rather than switching you to a new Tred account in July as previously communicated, instead we’ll be closing your existing Tred account and returning any remaining funds to you

Your Tred card will keep working until 28th July or the point when you close your account. We recommend spending your balance ahead of that date.

How to get your Tred balance returned:

1. Go to the Profile section of the Tred app and click ‘Close account’, which will open a pre-populated email addressed to support@tred.earth.
2. Attach to this email a copy of a bank statement for the account that you’d like us to transfer your remaining Tred funds into. This account must be in your name and the statement must be from the last 3 months and include your sort code and account number.
3. Send the email.

It can take up to 60 days for the final transfer to be made, and you won’t be able to access your Tred account after 28th July if the process is still ongoing. So please share your bank statement asap to avoid the risk of your funds being temporarily inaccessible during the closure process.

Ahead of your account closure, we recommend you take the following steps:

1. Try to spend as much of the funds on your Tred card as possible, and avoid topping up any more
2. If your Tred card is lost or breaks, please apply to close your account early and we’ll transfer your remaining funds back to you, rather than sending you a replacement card
3. Submit any disputes as soon as possible, so we can resolve them before your account is closed. If you have any outstanding issues at the time your account closes (for example, you’re waiting for a refund that’s not yet been made), we’ll continue working with you after your account closure to get everything sorted out.

This link contains the legal info about the termination of your relationship with our card issuer, Nium – you may want to keep it for your records.

Will I be able to use Tred in the future?

The good news is that when we eventually relaunch a personal account it’ll have all the features you’ve been asking for including the ability to pay your friends & Apple/Google pay

We’ve been incredibly grateful for your contributions to Tred so far. We’ve built the greenest debit card in the UK, planted thousands of trees, offset over 1,000,000kg of CO2 and built a product that thousands are using

We understand the impact this will have and the team is on-hand to support with any issues. If you have any questions please do get in touch by replying to this email.

Do you own a business?
As we’re launching our Tred business account, if you want to sign up to hear more about it or get early access just click the link below.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

So they found people were not prepared to pay £4.99 for basic banking functions free elsewhere then.

Shame - I liked Tred but no way was I paying for a bank (with no features for that cost)

[ndrw (A judgemental prick)]

Big surprise. There’s not really room for n+1 fintechs in the UK market, and if your USP is charging people £4.99 for basic functionality you’re living in cloud cuckoo land.

[ndrw (A judgemental prick)]

@bee

to get your Tred balance returned:

1. Go to the Profile section of the Tred app and click ‘Close account’, which will open a pre-populated email addressed to support@tred.earth.
2. Attach to this email a copy of a bank statement for the account that you’d like us to transfer your remaining Tred funds into. This account must be in your name and the statement must be from the last 3 months and include your sort code and account number.
3. Send the email.

It can take up to 60 days for the final transfer to be made, and you won’t be able to access your Tred account after 28th July if the process is still ongoing. So please share your bank statement asap to avoid the risk of your funds being temporarily inaccessible during the closure process.

This feels incredibly onerous. Can’t one just transfer their own funds out?

[DanGraf]

I have no desire to send them my detailed statement from another bank showing my balance, and my private transactions. That’s a bizarre request - I’m not applying for credit, I should simply be able to name a sort code and account number and off we go. And I should be able to do it in-app… Mad.

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

@ndrw

you’re living in cloud cuckoo land.

Showing your age there! This was my grandmother’s catchphrase.

[DanGraf]

I’ve sent them a redacted Monzo statement header with no details, hopefully enough info

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

No reason they shouldn’t. Whenever these are requested of me, if they have no purpose for needing to see see my transaction history, the whole thing gets redacted besides the part of the header that includes my name and address, the banks name and my account details and the date. Never had any problems.

[ndrw (A judgemental prick)]

I shall make no public statement! I try not to give too many giveaways as to my age, not sure if successfully!

[j06 (Jamie)]

My balance has been at nought since Tred told me it would begin charging. I tried to close my account but the app is only set up to pre–populate an email from the Apple Mail app (!!) which I don’t have.

The other option was simply to not have enough in the account to fund the fee, which would trigger an account closure after two months’ failed attempts. Needless to say I’m still a customer after six.

[j06 (Jamie)]

Tred account all closed down automatically, on the day it pulled all personal current accounts. At that time, there was a lot of encouragement to invest via a crowdfund. Now that looks to be in trouble too…

From email, as I still receive them:

Hi there,

We’ve decided to postpone our public crowdfunding launch, it will no longer be going live this morning

Due to recent regulatory changes by the FCA, CrowdCube has reduced the amount of information businesses can provide on the pitch page, this includes Tred. This means we are still having ongoing conversations with pre-registered investors which we’re committed to completing before launching to the public. We believe this is the fairest approach.

If you’re interested in investing, please drop me a note by replying to this email or emailing [redacted]. I can help provide information upfront to give you an overview of Tred, our vision and product. This will help give you enough information before the pitch goes live.

[gt94sss2]

I closed my account in December when they announced a monthly fee.

So was quite surprised to get an email recently saying

We’ve been contacting you over the past few weeks to settle your negative balance (debt) on your Tred account. Please reply to this email or contact support@tred.earth to settle this debt.

Especially since they haven’t tried to contact me and I have never had a debit balance with them…

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@j06

Now that looks to be in trouble too…

In a way a shame but they never really had a product that was in any way market different to what else is out there. Plus charging for a basic bank account was never going to work for them.

Looks like last funding was for £688k in 2022 which I’d imagine is gone and they’ve run out of runway.

Slight shame.

[ndrw (A judgemental prick)]

@JIMMWX

never really had a product that was in any way market different to what else is out there

So a bit like Algbra, Kr-poo, and all the others?

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@ndrw

So a bit like Algbra

Kinda. I think Algbra does have a difference though, they actually have to me at least one of the nicest eco-first fintech implementations going. But Kroo, yeah.

Basically, you can’t just be “another FinTech” and expect to get away with it these days.