Float is a pay-it-forward ledger for independent retailers. Customers pre-pay into a business's float. That credit finds someone who needs it.
Someone walks into their local café on a hard week. They’ve been there a hundred times. Today they can’t quite afford it. The person behind the counter knows their name, knows their order, but has no mechanism to help without it feeling like charity.
The regular who was in that morning would have covered it without a second thought - if there was a way to do that. There isn’t. Not yet.
Float is built for that moment. A pay-it-forward ledger at the point of sale, funded by regulars, managed by the business. Not an app for the giver’s ego. Not a charity. Just a pot that sits there, ready, for when someone needs it.
The desire to help is everywhere.
The infrastructure for it is nowhere.
The business already knows who needs a hand. Float gives them a resource to act on that knowledge - quietly, without embarrassment for anyone. The giver never meets the receiver. The app just holds the pot.
A regular taps a QR code. Adds what they feel like. No account, no friction. They go about their day. The pot grows.
The barista knows who has been struggling. The float gives them something to act on - no policy, no form, just discretion.
The giver gets a single notification. No names. Just the quiet certainty that it went somewhere it was needed.
Cafés already do a version of this - a tip jar, a suspended coffee chalked on the wall, a quiet word and a comped sandwich. It runs on trust, but it doesn't scale, it isn't visible, and nobody can see whether the money reached anyone. Float keeps the goodwill and gives it a ledger.
Every contribution is recorded, and the giver gets a single notification when it's used. Proof it went somewhere it was needed, without names and without watching.
No jar to reach into, no conversation, no list on the wall. The business hands it over quietly, and the record only ever says redeemed by a stranger.
Float never holds a penny. Contributions settle straight into the business's own account, and the ledger just records what is earmarked as float. Safer than a jar, and simpler than it sounds.
The pot grows in real time, and a whole high street can run on the same rails. A chalkboard tally can do neither.
These are the working screens, running in demo mode. Top up on the counter till, or watch a shop's public pot page breathe.
Float is free for the business to run. Contributors cover a small fee on their top-ups - a marginal premium on generosity that most people happily accept when the purpose is clear. You never pay to have a float, and you never hold the money.
No setup fee, no monthly charge. Running a float costs the shop nothing. Analytics - who contributes, how the pot moves - are an optional extra you can take or leave.
Float never holds a penny. Top-ups settle straight into your own account through your card reader, and the ledger just records what is earmarked as float. You decide who redeems.
No new hardware and no new till. A regular taps the reader or scans a QR code, and staff mark a redemption with a tap. That is the whole workflow.
Contributors cover a small fee on top-ups - that is how Float keeps the lights on. The shop pays nothing, and the person who needs a hand pays nothing.
Independent shops run on relationships, not schemes. They already know who is having a hard week - they just never had a normal way to act on it. No charity, no forms, no chain-store loyalty card pretending to care. Float hands a single café something that used to take a bank or a big brand, and lets it stay exactly what it is - independent, local, and run on trust.
Float doesn’t disrupt
independent retail.
It lets it do things its own way.
Tell me a little about your shop and I'll get you set up. Free to run, and nothing to hold - the money stays in your own account.