Useless? Lawnmower App Removes 'Spare Change' Feature

The Bitcoin application Lawnmower has just recently changed its functionality removing the “spare change” feature that would deposit the rounded off change into digital currency savings kept within the user’s account. Unfortunately, people are complaining about the removal of this feature as it was advertised exactly for this purpose. Now the product offers basic recurring payments that many people say is something already available with some reviews now calling it “useless.”

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Lawnmower’s ‘Spare Change’ Removal Allows ‘International Expansion’

The Lawnmower app was founded in January of 2015 by Alex Sunnarborg, Pieter Gorsira, and Patrick Archambeau and introduced its “spare change” feature in April of that year. The platform allowed a user to make a small purchase of say $1.75 and it would round the transaction up to $2.00. The change of 25 cents would then be invested in Bitcoin for the person allowing them to accrue small fractions of the currency over time.

On March 15th, Lawnmower Inc. told the public via the company’s Medium blog the application was “evolving.” Instead of offering the “spare change” feature they have restructured the service to allow customizable recurring purchases.

The blog post reads:

We’ve replaced “spare change” with customizable recurring purchases over time — you can now customize a fixed amount ($) to invest on a weekly or monthly basis. To supplement your automated buys, you can trade as freely as you’d like with our new instant buy & sell features.

However, the discontent over this change is pretty apparent on the applications download pages on Apple and Google’s app stores and also complaints throughout forums. One reviewer on the iOS app store writes:

App is now useless.— The whole reason I downloaded this app and enjoyed using it was for the spare change feature. They removed that and now only have taken weekly or monthly chunks of money out. It’s no different than the Coinbase app. Going to delete this soon.

One Reddit commenter added, “It seems to defeat the purpose for me. Now I’ve got an app that allows me to buy/sell or have recurring buys setup for a Coinbase wallet. Yet, Coinbase does this exact same thing. So why am I giving my information and control to another app that only does the same thing?”

Despite some of the negative commentary there were some users who felt the move was a better choice for the company. Another reviewer wrote a positive comment saying, “Love the simplicity of the new logo and the new update of converting a fixed amount rather than spare change. This way I can track and control my bitcoin investment rather than not being aware of how much spare change is really going into it.”

The company seems confident with its new logo and that the application has all new features such as an analyzed portfolio with charts, an optional pin-code, and customizable recurring payment system tethered to a user’s bank account. Lawnmower explained that the removal of “spare change” adds “investment flexibility, operational logistics and international asset expansion.” Removing the feature allows them to operate beyond the US, servicing “many countries, currencies, and payment methods supported by Coinbase.”

The company also explains it has more updates coming in the future such as “expanding its investment offerings to provide new portfolio allocation options.” With Lawnmower not able to offer the “spare change” feature anymore, perhaps someone else will pick up that particular market again. It’s apparent from recent reviews that it was a functionality people enjoyed.

What do you think about the Lawnmower app’s recent update? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of the Lawnmower.io website, user-agent.org and Shutterstock