It started with a tip. It became a payments ecosystem.
Together began as cashless QR tipping for Montenegro's hospitality, guests scan and tip in seconds, no app needed. It grew into a full ecosystem: peer-to-peer transfers, a marketplace, and a physical Together card, all moving money cleanly between euros and dollars.
Product-managed by cnctd's founder. The engineers who built it now build at cnctd.
Four releases, one growing ecosystem.
Cashless tips
The seed: a QR code on the table. Guests scan and tip in seconds, staff keep 99%, nobody hunts for an ATM.
Transfers
Wallets and peer-to-peer payments turned a tipping tool into an everyday money app, split a dinner, send a friend their half.
Marketplace
Local services and experiences, payable from the same balance, the wallet earned places to be spent.
Together card
A physical payment card closed the loop: money earned in the app spends anywhere, not just inside it.
A cash-dependent market, and scope that kept growing.
Montenegro's hospitality runs on cash: staff lose tips to it, guests rarely carry it, and no digital payment layer existed for the market. Together set out to fix tipping first, then user demand kept widening the scope mid-build: transfers, a marketplace, a card. The product had to grow from a single flow into an ecosystem without breaking the money underneath.
One balance, four ways to move it.
QR tip & pay
Guests scan and pay in seconds, no app install, no account. Staff see the tip land instantly.
Wallet & transfers
Peer-to-peer payments between users: split bills, send money, request it back, from the same balance the tips land in.
Marketplace
A storefront for local services paid straight from the wallet, turning stored value into daily spending.
Together card
A physical card on the same balance, earnings become spendable everywhere, and the app becomes a bank-adjacent daily tool.
Money that converts once, not twice.
The ecosystem runs across euros and dollars. The first Stripe integration silently double-converted currency on the way through, a slice shaved off every single transaction. In fintech that's not a rounding error; it's users watching their money shrink for no visible reason.
- Diagnosed the double conversionTraced where EUR became USD and back again inside the payment path, quantifying the loss per transaction.
- Compared processors head-to-headPayPal and KOMMERCE PAY were evaluated against Stripe on conversion behavior, fees, and regional support.
- Reworked Stripe to convert onceThe integration was rebuilt so every payment converts exactly once, the payment layer shipped intact at 98% release-ready.
Measurable value on every side of the transaction.
Staff
Instant, cashless tips that settle fast, keep 99% of earnings.
Guests & users
Tip without cash, pay friends, buy locally, one balance, no friction.
Venues
Cashless tipping without expensive terminals, and happier staff who stay.
The team behind Together now builds at cnctd.
cnctd's founder ran Together as its project manager, owning scope, releases, and the processor decisions above. The engineers who built the product are now cnctd's developers. This isn't a case study we admire from a distance; it's the team, reassembled, taking on the next system.
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