Leaf a Tip

The problem it started from

Plenty of service work runs on tips. Not all of it runs on the tools built for tips. Stand behind a counter and there's a terminal that prompts for 18/20/22%. Spend three hours walking a group through something you know well and there's usually nothing — and the person who wants to thank you has to dig for cash that fewer and fewer people carry.

What fills that gap is a handle scribbled on a receipt, or a name half-heard and mistyped into an app later that night. It works often enough that nobody fixes it, and fails often enough to be worth fixing.

What it is

Every person on the platform gets a page at leafatip.com/theirname. They can print it as a QR code, put it in a bio, or say it out loud. Someone scans or types it, picks an amount, and sends. No app to install, and nothing to download to look at a page.

It is a tipping platform and nothing else. No product is sold through it, nothing ships, and nobody is billed on a schedule.

How it works

The whole design follows from one decision: separate paying from tipping.

1. You buy a pack of credit with a card. This is the only card transaction in the system.
2. You go do the thing — the tour, the class, the service.
3. You scan their code or open their link.
4. You pick an amount, add a note if you want, and send. Your balance goes down. No card is charged.
5. They move the money to their bank whenever they choose.

Tipping four people in one evening puts one charge on your statement, not four. That is the point of prepaying.

What it costs

Tips arrive in full. Nothing is deducted from a tip, and nothing is charged to the person receiving it.

The revenue is on the way in instead: every $5 of credit purchased carries one $1 Low Five, added on top of the credit rather than taken out of it. It appears on the purchase page before payment and is itemized on the receipt after.

That is the entire business model. No subscription, no listing fee, no percentage shaved off the top. Better to be visibly paid once than invisibly paid forever.

How decisions get made

• Touch the card as little as possible. Prepaid credit exists so that tipping is a balance change, not a payment event.
• Show every number before it's committed to. The markup, the $5–$50 tip range, what lands on the other side. Surprises belong in the tip, not the fee schedule.
• Receiving money should be boring. No application to be approved, no minimum payout threshold, no waiting on someone's judgment about whether you're worth paying.
• Nothing about anyone gets sold. No advertising, no trackers, no data brokered onward. The Low Five is the whole revenue model precisely so it doesn't have to be.

Where it stands

Built and maintained in-house at TYPICAL LLC on Next.js, Firebase, and Stripe Connect. Currently in early development with launch clients in the Kansas City market.

Interested in trying it, or in putting it in front of your own customers? hello@leafatip.com.