This startup is solving the worst thing about the end of your holiday – pesky foreign currency

We’ve been there before. All that spare change in a foreign currency weighing down your pockets, trying to spend it all at the airport before you exit the country. But not all currency exchange places accept coins, and the low denomination notes are barely worth converting. That’s when you consider buying an exorbitantly-priced cappuccino or a garishly-designed fridge magnet. The money will be useless to you in an hour anyway.

But what if you could hold on to that spare change and redeem it for something that’s actually useful? More money in your PayPal account, for example? Or extra Skype call credit? Maybe even a Nike gift card? Israeli startup TravelersBox hopes you’re the type to spend wisely. It doesn’t want you to consume for the sake of consuming. It trusts you understand the value of hard-earned money and spending it in a utilitarian manner.

At some airports you’ll find machines developed and operated by the startup that allow travelers to deposit their spare change and redeem it from brands such as Starbucks, H&M, Skype, Paypal, iTunes, Google Play, GAP, and countless others. There’s no need to pre-register with the service, nor go through a cumbersome verification process.

Frustration

TravelersBox was founded by Dror Blumenthal, Idan Deshe, and Tomer Zussman.

“[Zussman] lived in New York for six years and would constantly fly back and forth [from Israel],” says Blumenthal, co-founder and chief marketing officer. “Idan and I visited him in the US a few years ago and saw he had half a million quarters, nickels, and other coins. We broke out in laughter.”

Jokes aside, the three founders, who are childhood friends, soon understood their irritation was similarly experienced by other frequent travelers. Zussman indicated to his friends he wanted to invent “a kind of an ATM machine” that would accept these bulky coins and transfer the amount to individual’s bank account or credit card. “We thought it was a great idea, and as we had some prior entrepreneurial experience, we immediately started to investigate and research,” says Blumenthal.

However, it wasn’t easy to crack. The entire process from concept to execution took the entrepreneurs almost two years to complete. From an early stage they understood transfers to individual bank accounts would be impossible to include, due to heavy transaction fees and commissions. “To deposit and wire five dollars, you need five dollars,” he explains.

The startup’s big break came after they met with TAV Airports, which operates airports in seven different countries, including five in Turkey. By this time they had a working prototype of their product, which they demonstrated to the CEO of the firm. The meeting went well and TravelersBox inked an agreement to open its first kiosk in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport shortly after. This was about two years ago.

Persuading travelers

Despite leaping the first hurdle, the startup had to face other obstacles as well. One of the most pressing issues was understanding how to communicate the solution cogently and succinctly to passengers. Busy airports are multilingual and multicultural and the uniqueness of the product meant it was unlikely users had prior knowledge of similar services. “It took us a few months to understand how to crack it,” admits Blumenthal.

In the efforts to understand the target audience, Blumenthal says they spoke to hundreds of people, sent thousands of emails, and constantly tweaked the user interface to make the process as simple as possible. “What we discovered after speaking to users is that when we talk about the problem, they understand the solution very easily. If we say on the poster, ‘Left with Turkish money? Transfer to PayPal,’ people get it,” he explains.

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