Customers of payment platform Get complain unable to use cards or withdraw money

PAYMENT platform Get is facing complaints on social media platforms from customers unable to withdraw money from their accounts. Most of these customers appear to be teenagers, who had opened accounts with Get to have a card for online spending.

Get offers customers a pseudo bank account and debit card, with an accompanying solution for parents to track their children’s spending. The service had been heavily promoted by teenagers on TikTok. It is not currently licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to provide payment services, nor is it exempted from requiring such a licence.

Previously named QNect, Get had started out with a membership, ticketing and merchandising platform for societies but later evolved into a financial services platform for teenagers below 16 – who do not qualify for debit cards.

Get’s customers claim they have been unable to use their debit cards since July and have not been able to withdraw their monies since October.

They have been posting complaints online as far back as August, with screenshots of communications from Get claiming that its cards are not working because its service provider Nium is facing difficulties. Customers can still transfer out the money in their accounts using PayNow, Get said in those communications.

But users are claiming otherwise. Some customers said attempts to transfer funds out of Get are greeted with the message of “insufficient funds”. Transfers have reportedly also led to account balances with Get being deducted, but no funds being transferred.

One customer who spoke to The Business Times (BT) on condition of anonymity said she started using Get around June 2021 after watching TikTok influencer videos.

“It interested me then because I was able to get my own debit card to make purchases online,” she said.

Her Get debit card stopped working in July this year, but the customer was still able to transfer money out of her Get account to her own bank account. This was until Nov 9 when Get showed a successful transfer, but she never received her funds.

She has a small sum of money still stuck in the Get account, but said her friends were able to transfer their monies out in time.

Nium said in response to BT’s queries that its card network is up, and it is still serving its customers around the world. The payment services provider does not hold end-customers’ funds and said it could not comment on individual customer technical or commercial circumstances.

Get is still an active company, based on filings with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, and there are no insolvency or winding up orders filed against it. But the company has not posted new content on its social media channels since June.

The startup raised a US$2.5 million Series A round in Q2 2018, with Vertex Ventures and Click Ventures leading the funding round. Vertex Ventures invested about US$2.4 million of the US$2.5 million round, according to data platform VentureCap Insights. Founder Daniel Liang was listed in Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 in the consumer technology category in 2019.

Vertex Ventures declined to comment.

In response to queries from BT, Liang said Get cards were unavailable for use due to Nium and Get spending time improving the cards model and needing to pause the card network to implement changes. The cards should be working sometime this month, he said.

“Get customers have always been able to use the Get app to send money locally via PayNow or FAST,” said Liang.

Any issues with transferring money out of a user’s Get account are due to caps by anti-money laundering measures, which include know-your-customer checks. According to Liang, customers are graded either “Light-KYC” or “Full-KYC”, with “Light-KYC” customers able to send money locally to only business bank accounts. Only “Full-KYC” customers can send money to personal bank accounts as well.

Liang also claimed that customers can initiate a refund to the source bank account, but would be required to send photo identification for verification purposes in order for this transfer to take place.

However, the customer BT spoke to has verified her identity with Get, and was able to send money to her own personal bank account prior to Nov 9.

Additional reporting by Tan Nai Lun