Nick Pompa, founder of Lootlock — an app that prevents kids from running up unauthorized gaming bills on their parents’ credit cards — is an avid gamer and software developer working in fintech.
As a dad of two under two, he’s looking forward to sharing his passion for gaming with his kids when they grow old enough to play. He started gaming at age 6, he told TechCrunch. Lootlock was selected for TechCrunch’s 2025 Startup Battlefield 200 and will be exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt, October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
As he gabbed about gaming with other parents, or simply read the news, he kept hearing horror stories of kids shackling their parents with surprise credit card bills, sometimes unwittingly running up thousands of dollars.
The gaming industry has a notoriously slimy side of using “design tricks,” as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau described last year. They often target children, enticing them into unlocking fee-incurring game features. Other agencies, like the FTC have issued similar warnings.
“The gaming industry uses clever design, social engineering, and player tracking to encourage kids to spend more money while playing,” Pompa said. “I am an avid gamer, so I have seen firsthand the drastic shift to micro-transactions in the industry over the last eight to nine years.”
Although the FTC did force Fortnight earlier this year to refund $126 million to people who filed claims, that’s rare. Parents generally have no recourse but to pay.
The typical advice is for parents to use device-level parental controls that block in-app purchases. But, Pompa said, many of his parent friends are fine with letting kids spend a little money on such purchases, under the right conditions.
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He told the story of the friend named Joe that inspired Pompa to build Lootlock. Joe is a dad to three kids, all avid gamers. Joe gives each kid an allowance every month, and the kids were using the money to buy gaming products, setting up a ridiculous system where he handed them allowance cash and they handed it back to pay the credit card. And he had to monitor their purchases closely.
Looklock lets parents automatically load a digital, prepaid credit card, issued by Lootlock’s partner, Transcard, that kids add to their device’s digital wallet.
Parents can automate a set amount of allowance to be added to the card, say weekly or monthly, and can then make any portion of that …