Aplauz is changing the rules of the payments game. In this game, we all win!

We all know someone or had the experience ourselves of opening a credit card statement and finding unwelcome surprise charges.

Last month my neighbour used her credit card to give her son access to an online game he liked. Or so she thought. But when she saw charges that she had not approved at all, her jaw dropped.

When she questioned her son, he was surprised, too. He had no idea that he spent a lot of money with his mother’s credit card. While he was having fun with his game, he accidentally agreed to a subscription and accepted a few in-game purchases.

It became an expensive lesson about being careful with online payments and reading the fine print to avoid bad surprises.

This scenario happens in households around the world every day.

For the people involved, it seems unfair.

They just want to enjoy their digital lives, but feel that they need to be careful every time they enter their credit card details. Research told us that young people in particular have become suspicious of online payments because of painful experiences.

However, it is not just about kids who like gaming. It’s everyone who spends a part of their life online, the digital citizens.

To protect themselves, digital citizens have become more and more careful of their online spending, to the point that they tend to choose what’s available for free instead of taking the risk.

Next to being worried about how much they spend, research shows that digital citizens aren’t comfortable giving away so much private information to a faceless screen. Why would they be?

Let’s compare it to offline payments. A shopper goes to a store, chooses what she wants and touches her card to the machine. She doesn’t have to give them any personal data at all. It’s easy, transparent and fair.

Why should online payments be any different?

Our answer is simple: they should not be.

Aplauz was founded in 2020. Our mission is to make every online payment a conscious choice. Easy, transparent and fair. Read Aplauz Manifesto here.

Aplauz is perfect for who wants a payment method that gives them full transparency on their spending, or who simply doesn’t have access to a credit card.

In a convenience store around the corner, a user can buy an Aplauz voucher. He chooses the value he wants to spend online and prepays it on the spot.

After that, he pays online with Aplauz and only the value that is on the voucher can be spent. Further charges are impossible. The user is also protected from misuse or fraud because the voucher holds no personal data.

We started our European introduction of Aplauz in Switzerland, where Aplauz is available in 2000 convenience stores. From our Amsterdam office, we are ramping up the rollout across Europe this year to give millions of digital citizens the option to choose a fair way to pay.

Aplauz is changing the rules of the payments game. In this game, we all win.

• Digital citizens win back their freedom.
• Partner merchants win back the trust of their customers.
• Convenience stores win traffic to their stores.

And my neighbour wins because she can buy her son an Aplauz voucher for the value of the game he wants to play without any risk of spending more than she expects.

Her son wins, too. He gets to play his game without any worries. Want to join the winning game? Contact us to add Aplauz to your checkout.