Pay By Touch, one step ahead of the market, one step closer to failure

In the startup environment, it is a habit to talk about successes to keep our hopes alive for the future, but it is a big mistake to forget the failures of the past and not benefit from the experiences of the past. For this purpose, the Ecomotive team has collected the experiences of a series of failed startups, so that reviewing their failed stories may be a basis for the success of new startups in Iran’s startup community. This collection will be published and made available to the audience in the form of the story of failure. We review the 18th part of this series, which deals with the failure of the Pay By Touch startup. Solidus Networks, which operated under the name Pay By Touch, was founded in 2002 as a private company by John P. Rogers was founded in San Francisco. The company enabled secure access to personal information through unique biometric features of individuals and was a provider of biometric authentication, personalized marketing, and payment solutions. The transaction methods offered by Pay By Touch are convenient and safe.

The company had built a network of biometric authentication for transactions in the US, Asia, and Europe, and through its network platform, linked consumers to financial accounts, personal authentication information, and more by placing their finger on a scanner. The platform also provides payment methods in inter-company financial exchange networks, with or without a card. Pay By Touch business methods include multi-line biometric payment, one-line biometric payment, personalized marketing, customer ID services, payment processing, biometric check cashing, biometric multi-factor authentication, etc.

Despite his rebellious personality and chaotic life, when he arrived in San Francisco, John P. Rogers managed to convince investors to give him $340 million to launch his startup. Including ; Gordon Getty One of the richest men in the world, 50 million dollars and Ron Barkele billionaire; Moharram Asrar and Bill Clinton’s finance manager invested millions of dollars in Pay By Touch. In this way, other influential people and big capitalists were also encouraged to invest in this company.Investors influenced by the presence Named persons On the board were Rogers’ charismatic personality and his vision of a future where everyone could shop with their fingerprint instead of cash or a credit card. But after the bankruptcy of the company and Rogers being prosecuted, these same people held him responsible for throwing away 8 million dollars a month and believed that his constant parties and “drug abuse” – cocaine – overshadowed his business judgment. and has resulted in destructive behavior. Even one of the board members reported his inappropriate behavior with female employees.

However, his lawyer denied the accusations and said that the company’s failure had nothing to do with his client’s private life and that he had tried to save his subsidiary until death.

In May 2007, when investors smelled the bad situation of the company, they sent emails to each other demanding a change at the top of the company. A request that was met with a sharp reaction and threatening emails from Rogers. Ultimately, Pay By Touch, with more than 800 employees, closed without notice on March 19, 2008 and ceased operations.