Bolt’s December 2023 staff cuts made me ask what merchants were paying it to do better than other checkout providers. The four-day workweek had attracted attention and people I knew. It did not explain the customer advantage.
I had treated the schedule and the founder’s departure as evidence that the business could not work. Neither establishes that. A layoff changes the cost base; a shorter week changes how people organize work. The useful question is whether the remaining team builds something merchants keep buying.
Bolt also needs a fair comparison. A checkout provider and a broad payments processor do not sell identical services. I would compare checkout completion, integration effort, support, and the cost to merchants before declaring that one has no reason to exist.
A workplace perk can persuade someone to join. The product has to persuade a customer to stay. That was the part of Bolt’s story I still could not explain.