Today, we're excited to share Pool Links, social payment links that make it easy to collect money.

We are big believers in the power and simplicity of payment links. Using the Braid app, you can now create a personalized Pool Link for collecting money. These links can be shared anywhere—your group chat, email list, Discord, and more. Using the link, anyone can contribute directly to your pool. Best of all, contributors can use any debit card, and don't need the Braid app or an account to contribute. Once the money is in your pool, you can save it, send it or spend it from there. Here's an example.

Our goal is to make pooling money as easy as possible, and we're looking forward to your feedback. If you're new to Braid, drop your phone number on our homepage and get $5 after you create your first link (terms and conditions apply).

A few important questions:

Why do Pool Links exist?

When Braid Pools launched, anyone who wanted to contribute money had to download the app, connect their bank account, and then they could transfer money. We kept hearing that it was hard to get others to fund the pool because there were too many steps. 

Collecting money in Braid should never be a hassle. 

Pool Links are fast, simple, and easy to understand. You can share them wherever your community lives: a Discord server, an email list, a Facebook group, it doesn't matter. Pool Links can go anywhere.

Who is using Pool Links?

We're seeing a whole range of use-cases for Pool Links—managing a studio space, shared funds for a gaming collective, a group savings effort, money for an after-school program—these are just some of the ways people are using our pools today. These shared expenses, often messily managed with spreadsheets, IOUs and multiple payment apps, are now managed easily with Braid.

What's a Braid Pool?

A Braid Pool is a shared wallet designed for pooling and managing money together. You can create a Braid Pool in seconds, fund it, and invite others to help manage the money. It's easy to assign permissions to control how funds are spent. And you can spend directly from your pool with free Mastercard digital and physical debit cards.

The money can live in Braid as long as you need it to, whether that's a few hours or a few years. We see pools for both ad-hoc and ongoing use-cases. 

How is this different from P2P apps or fundraising tools?

What makes Braid different is that it's a dedicated place for shared money, end-to-end. You can manage everything from your pool, collecting, managing, and spending money, so there's no need to send the money back to your personal bank account.

Pool Links are fast and easy to set up, and less formal and more diverse than crowdfunding campaigns. Create a pool link for everything from a single utility bill to an ongoing side project

Why would I want to pool money?

Sharing is happening on a large scale—we share cars, homes, files, photos and documents. But, it hasn’t really happened with money. We still default to spreadsheets and tracking apps rather than products that enable a more collaborative experience. Financial products have been designed primarily for individuals and businesses for decades, but creating an easy way to share money needs to exist.

Splitting a bill for a one-time expense is easy, sure, but collecting money from a lot of people, or managing shared ongoing expenses is still really difficult. We hope to change that with Braid Pools.

Tell me more about Braid.

Braid is a social payments company. We're building financial tools and infrastructure to make pooling money simple and fast.

We believe pooling money promotes transparency and trust, something that is deeply needed, and that collaborative money is the future.

We have three core beliefs:

1. Bank Alone, Braid Together. We're not a primary, individual account. Instead, we are solely focused on building tools for pooling and managing money together.

2. Money is complicated because humans are complicated (aka don't confuse a human problem with a software problem). Sharing money is as much about understanding people as it is about moving money.

3. Everyone pays, no one pays back. Fronting money can feel overwhelming, and by pooling money up front, no one has to take on the burden of payment alone.

Want to give payment links a try? We’d love to hear your feedback. Get in touch: hello@braid.co.