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Clinkle, the secretive mobile-payments service backed with $25 million in early investments by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, will soon allow more college students to sign up.
The company is still in stealth mode, with a pilot program at Stanford, but plans to launch at other colleges within the next year. It won’t be available to the general public, just yet. Clinkle does mobile payments, like services provided by Square or PayPal, without changing or adding any new hardware to stores or to users’ mobile devices, according to the company.
Student can sign up for the waiting list by entering their university-issued e-mail address on Clinkle’s site. Colleges that have the highest percentage of their students signing up will get access.
The company has been tight-lipped about its technology. The college-only exclusiveness, similar to Facebook’s initial service-coverage, could create more curiosity — and perhaps even demand. A Clinkle rep said the company simply wants to target a community its staff understands and one that is a “dense community that lives and eats in close quarters, always frequenting the same places.” Clinkle’s staff is largely made up of recent college grads.
While Clinkle hasn’t yet revealed how the service works, ValleyWag’s anonymous source has said it uses beeping sounds to communicate to the VeriFone machines that already exist in stores to make the transactions.
