By George Geddes on Monday 7 January 2019
Glint, a gold payment app, has pulled its fully funded crowdfunding round as a result of significant delays to its US expansion. The news also comes after the resignation of two key directors.
Late last year, gold payments app Glint has pulled its £2.2m crowdfunding campaign. The news comes after two of the company’s directors step down from their positions and its US expansion has been delayed by six months.
In late November, Mark Mahaffey and Benjamin Davies stepped down from the board of directors at Glint, according to Companies House filings. Davies, co-founder of the company, and Mahaffey have worked for the company since June 2015 before its official launch to the public in December 2017.
Jason Cozens, CEO at Glint, speaking exclusively with AltFi said both Mahaffey and Davies have left the board but remain employees at the company.
Glint offers a payment card which is backed by physical gold. Its customers can hold a range of currencies which can be used to purchase gold through the app.
The users can spend the value of their holdings depending on the real time value of the commodity based on the market price. One purpose of the app is to protect its users from inflation as gold holds its value compared to fiat money which can significantly depreciate, according to Glint.
AltFi has learnt Glint also pulled its £2.2m crowdfund campaign from Crowdcube. Its initial target of £1.25m was reached in just 72 hours.
According to Cozens, the crowdfunding campaign could not be completed because the company’s US expansion was delayed by six month. The main reason for the delay was caused by one of Glint’s commercial partners not being ready for the development which Cozens says was ‘out of the company’s control’.
Cozens added: “Both Crowdcube and Glint felt this all amounted to a ‘material change’ and that we should cancel [the crowdfunding campaign]. The decision was greeted with disappointment by some who were excited about investing in Glint, however we expect we will come back to the crowd once we are closer to our soft launch in the USA in the Spring.”
With 22,000 registered users, Cozens says the round of funding attracted over 1,600 investors who were all refunded their capital following the cancelation of the crowdfunding campaign. According Cozens Glint remains open to potential investors, accepting minimum investments of £50,000.
Prior to Glint’s latest crowdfund, the company hady received £8.3m in funding, according to Crunchbase. This includes two rounds of investing in August and November 2017 worth £3.1m and £3m, respectively. Lead investors in Glint’s previous fundraisers include Venture Labo Investment and Bray Capital.
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