Clinkle, the start-up that earlier this year raised $25 million from high-profile backers, has laid off 16 staff, equivalent to 25 per cent of the total.

The company has received a disproportionate amount of attention given it has yet to launch a commercial service. In fact, its plans are unclear beyond the intention to launch a mobile payment service on US college campuses.

However, Clinkle has started to hire some experienced executives. Earlier this month it appointed Andrew Rendich from Wal-Mart as vice president of operations and Allison Hopkins from Netflix was named vice president of talent.

Previously the company hired former Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy as its chief operating officer.

“I knew coming in that I’d be spending the bulk of my time building the executive team, and that the team would build out its own groups,” said McCarthy, according to a report in Fortune.

“Some young people are leaving, and some very seasoned executives are joining. It’s reasonable to assume that these execs wouldn’t be joining if something was chronically wrong or broken.”

He also said Clinkle plans to expand its employee numbers “aggressively” and its service will be publicly available on college campuses in the first quarter of 2014.