Swipely Shares Your Credit Card Purchases

Swipely is a new twitter-like social network, however instead of tracking your status, it tracks your purchases. It launched with venture capital of $8.5 million dollars.

What does Swipely do? You simply link your credit card to your Swipely account, and any purchases you make will appear throughout the day, similar to a tweet. For instance, if your friend purchased a McDonalds meal, it will simply show up as “Andrea just purchased a meal at McDonalds” on her Swipely account.

The first thought through your mind should be about the security of the network and access to your credit card information. Swipley promises that third party security specialists protect your credit card, so your credit card information will never show up anywhere, just announcements of what you‘re buying.

Unlike a similar Facebook application, this one won’t post how much you spent, just merely the services and where you purchased.

The idea behind it is to give your friends something to talk about. They may find they have more in common with you or vice versa based on purchases made. Or more commonly it’ll give you something to tease them about or vice versa. It’s just another way to start a conversation, or share interests. It’ll allow you to share more details about what you do in any given day with your friends and family.

Of course there are people who will say that this is way too intrusive, and people who feel that way don’t need to use the program. Most bloggers discussing Swipely don’t understand the purpose or need to share credit card purchases with friends and family in order to generate conversation. But, maybe Swipely will be used by parents who give their teenagers debit or credit cards to monitor their kids spending habits as it happens - rather than waiting for the statements to arrive?

Will you use Swipely?