Today brings some bad news for backers of Plastc, as the company’s website now says that the project has been brought to a halt and that the company itself will be filing for bankruptcy. Plastc was originally introduced in 2014 as a smart card bearing at least one solution to the problem many people face being forced to carry around various different payment methods and reward cards either in their wallet or their purse. To the contrary, according to the official website for the product, the project is no longer going forward. In fact, Plastc, Inc. – the company that was developing the card – is currently looking into “options to file Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and will cease operations.” Despite having created fully functioning cards and having shown off those cards to backers already, operations at the company will end on April 20, 2017. Although the company did manage to raise over $9 million for the project, its ultimate failure comes as a result of two separate failed fundraising attempts. The first round, which took place in February and was expected to raise $3.5 million, fell apart just weeks after investors postponed funding. The second deal, for $6.75 million was expected to close last week and send Plastc Card into production, saw an investor back out at the last moment.
So what does that mean for backers? Unfortunately, no pre-orders being fulfilled. Perhaps more painfully, the site makes no mention of any kind of refund either. Because the company is not only filing for bankruptcy but has also laid off all of its employees, and left no means to get in touch with itself, it is entirely possible that there won’t be any form of compensation at all for backers to the project. The company does appear to be genuinely upset about that fact, explaining that it understands how disappointing it must be and that Plastc, Inc. is “emotionally distraught.” However, it probably comes as little consolation to backers that the company did everything it could to “make the Plastc Card a reality.” That is particularly true since pre-orders weren’t necessarily cheap, at around $155 at its first inception.
Plastc started as something similar to Android Pay or Google Wallet in physical form, consolidating all of a user’s bank and credit cards into a single physical card. It also would have supported rewards cards. Although some drawbacks would have been that the card needed to be recharged and could only hold 20 cards, users would have been able to open up an application and connect to the card – allowing them to swap cards out as needed. Suffice it to say, that just won’t be happening now.