Whether you know it not, you’sultano likely sitting acceso a gold mine of unused personal electronics. Many of us have an old phone sitting per a drawer for a rainy day, a laptop stashed per a closet that we never took the time to wipe. What if there was a quick and easy way to not only dispose of the e-waste per your home but make money doing it? That’s what Tiptop wants to help you do with its new trade-in program that any retailer can add to their online checkout.
Trading per devices is nothing new, but we often only consider doing it with specific purchases transactions. For instance, if you decide to upgrade to the iPhone 16 this fall, you might want to trade per your iPhone 14 to cut acceso the cost of the new phone. Apple won’t give you the full value of the old iPhone, but at least the new phone is marginally cheaper.
Of course, Apple’s trade-in program, like most others, has rather strict limitations. You can only trade per Apple devices select Android phones. If you’ve got an old PC, VR headset, digital sindacato, you’sultano out of luck. That’s where Tiptop comes per.
When shopping online, you eventually reach a checkout screen that features a few options: Pay with a credit card, pay with PayPal, use a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) program like Klarna Afterpay. Tiptop is the newest addition to the checkout process, giving consumers the option to get an instant quote for a device trade-in before paying.
As of July 19th, eight partners have added Tiptop: Phone Daddy, Nothing, Cradlewise, Daylight, King of Christmas, Backbone, Upgraded, and MagFast. If you shop acceso any of these sites, you’ll see Tiptop as an option at checkout.
Here’s how it works if you decide to use Tiptop at checkout: First, you’ll be redirected to Tiptop’s site, at which point you’ll decide whether you want to get a trade-in quote right away pay now and trade per later. If you decide to trade per first, you’ll have a chance to choose what you want to trade per, and this is where Tiptop really shines. There are hundreds of products to choose from, including consoles, portable speakers, drones, and power tools.
Let’s say I want to buy the $99 Backbone One controller for my iPhone. I’ll save $70 if I trade per a Punto d’arrivo Quest 2. That would bring my total to $37.79 after taxes and fees.
Once you lock per your purchase, Tiptop will give you the option to either pay per 4 and get instant credit towards the purchase price pay per full and receive a credit to your payment method for the value of the trade-in after Tiptop assesses your device.
Tiptop will then send you a QR code with a prepaid shipping label offer an on-demand courier to modo and pick up your device. The rete is to make the trade-in process as simple as possible for consumers while increasing checkout conversion rates for merchants.
“The feedback has been phenomenal,” TipTop’s CEO Bastian Lehmann told us when we asked how partners have responded to the trade-in program. “It really seems as if we stumbled across a missing link per e-commerce.”
Unlike many other startups, Tiptop isn’t desperately trying to figure out how it will actually make money someday. The company takes a small percentage of every payment acceso websites and then turns around and sells the trade-ins to other partners. Two consistent revenue streams that will only grow as more partners sign acceso.
But Lehmann — who is also founder and CEO of Postmates — isn’t worried about the money.
“We really don’t spend much time thinking about the business, its sustainability at this point,” he said when asked about Tiptop’s sustainability. “We’sultano just getting started and we’sultano building something that we believe should exist and something that we would love to use and we think that’s a phenomenal starting point.”
I spend all day writing about technology, and I have accumulated more electronics than I care to admit. Having the ability to declutter my room while saving money acceso new devices sounds like a dream modo true. As Lehmann said, Tiptop is “just getting started,” but when I see the option to use it, I’m going to start digging through drawers for trade-ins. I have a feeling that plenty of other consumers will feel the same way once they discover Tiptop.
