Can You Really Sell Items Just by Taking a Photo? Testing the New “AI Instant Cash” App

Trying Out an “AI Instant Cash App”

There is reportedly an app that can turn items in front of you into cash instantly just by taking a photo with your smartphone.

That app is Chalyn, a service that launched in September last year. When you take a picture of an item you want to sell, AI assesses it and instantly displays a price. If you are satisfied with the amount, you arrange shipment, and once the item arrives at the center, the money is transferred to you.

The categories covered have continued expanding since launch. In addition to PCs, mobile phones, game consoles, and general fashion items, the service now accepts toys and sporting goods. In April, foreign currency and gift certificates were added as well.

Compared with the past, listing items on flea-market apps has become much easier. Still, you have to research market prices, set a selling price, and communicate with buyers.

Even when you clearly state, “This is a used item,” some people leave lower ratings saying they were disappointed by its condition. Dealing with people who insist on negotiating a discount no matter what can be fairly stressful. There are also plenty of sad cases where an item remains unsold for years. If you can really turn something into cash just by taking a photo and mailing it, that would be remarkable.

I immediately downloaded Chalyn. First, I decided to test it with an unused iPhone 13 Pro.

I opened the camera through the app and took a photo. After selecting the item’s category and model from the available options, a price appeared instantly. Wait, ¥5,616? Isn’t that rather low?

But apparently that wasn’t the end of the process. The app then required more detailed information about the item’s condition. After checking several boxes, the screen changed to say, “This item has been valued at the above price!” and the amount increased to ¥16,062.

It feels like I could probably get a higher price through a flea-market app or a traditional buyback service. But if you want to sell for more, you can always invest more time and effort. Above all, there is something satisfying about getting a price immediately.

A service from 2017 was one of the inspirations

Next, I tried a Louis Vuitton Alma handbag. When I first took a photo of it, the app displayed a valuation of ¥32,200, but after entering details about its condition, the price rose to ¥64,239.

Shipping is free if the assessed value is ¥5,000 or more. A delivery driver even comes to collect the item with packing materials. Once the item arrives at the center and undergoes inspection, the final price is determined. Counterfeit items are filtered out at this stage, and depending on the actual condition of the item compared to what was reported, the valuation may increase or decrease.

In the end, the iPhone received a downward adjustment and was purchased for ¥10,000. The Alma, on the other hand, received an upward adjustment and ended up selling for ¥90,000.

I also submitted seven items that my father had worn, including jackets, trousers, and suits. They were valued at ¥300 in total. These were the sort of items that probably would never sell on a flea-market app, so I was happy they received any value at all. If I had shipped them together with the iPhone and Alma, shipping would have been free, but because I sent them separately, the shipping cost exceeded the payout. Even so, I was glad that someone else might be able to use them.

According to Yoshio Aihara, CEO of IVA Co., Ltd., one of the inspirations for the service was a highly impactful service that launched in 2017.

That earlier service promised immediate cash deposits simply by photographing an item, but at the time it was reportedly difficult to sustain as a business. However, with today’s technological advances, Aihara believed it would be possible to make such a service viable by leveraging IVA’s strengths: the authentication expertise it had developed through its authenticity-verification service FAKEBUSTERS, along with its logistics and sales networks.

“Chalyn is built around the concept that anything can become money. But for that to work, the service must be able to properly handle high-value items; otherwise, the business itself cannot generate a profit. In that sense, the ability to identify counterfeits is absolutely essential.

In reality, counterfeit goods arrive quite frequently, and there are many cases where users send them without realizing they are fake. Sometimes genuine and counterfeit items are mixed together in the same shipment. That is why I believe there is real value in a company like ours, which can perform authentication.

One of the major challenges faced by past services was the prevalence of fraud. If money is paid before an item is shipped, false declarations and failures to send the item become much more common, creating operational difficulties.

Taking those lessons into account, we have designed a system that prevents such fraudulent behavior.”

Aiming to combine the best aspects of flea-market apps and reuse shops

According to Aihara, the most difficult issue in designing Chalyn was deciding at what stage the money should be paid. Paying immediately after a photo is taken would create a huge impact, but it would probably go too far. Should payment be made when the user presses the shipping button? Even that seemed risky. The company reportedly debated many different approaches internally.

“When you try to improve the user experience, the design inevitably becomes more ambitious. The earlier you pay, the happier users are, but the risk of fraud increases. If you delay payment, it becomes safer, but the service becomes less attractive. Finding the right balance is extremely difficult, and we’re still exploring it.

At the moment, we’ve adopted the most conservative approach: we assess the item after it arrives and then make payment. However, ultimately we’d like to move toward a slightly more advanced model.”

Another area the company hopes to improve is the accuracy of its automated valuations.

“Right now, after an item arrives, we conduct a proper assessment and then present an appropriate price. But we’d like to make this process more ambitious as well.

Currently, users can enter their own desired selling price. If they do, we make every effort to see whether we can purchase the item at that amount when it arrives. We really do work hard on that.”

In fact, Chalyn has grown its user base without relying on advertising. Even so, interest in the service has continued to rise steadily. Aihara explained:

“That’s exactly why we’re prioritizing improvement over expansion right now. If we scale up while the service is still incomplete, users may come away disappointed and never use it again.”

The company plans to launch full-scale promotional activities later this year once the service reaches a level it considers satisfactory. What exactly is it aiming for?

“We’ve developed the service to combine the best aspects of flea-market apps and reuse shops while eliminating the inconveniences of both.

We’ve already achieved the convenience of simply taking a photo, reducing the hassle of listings and buyer interactions.

Automatically presenting a fair price remains a difficult challenge, but that’s where the real competition lies. First, we want to improve pricing accuracy. Within six months, we hope to create a service we can confidently recommend to anyone—a service that doesn’t depend on the type of user and that anyone can use easily.”

If that vision is realized, it could have a significant impact on the resale and reuse market.