Product Launch

If You Aren’t Asking This Question, Just Stop Somewhere between designing your product spec and signing with a sponsor bank, every founder we talk to asks us about something they honestly don’t want to have to focus on: "Okay, what do we actually need to be compliant with?" There's no one short answer but there is a clear map, though. Launching a consumer credit card program means you’re stepping into a regulatory framework built around banks, and depending on how you structu

It’s Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend when you get an alert from one of your call centers. They’ve found an “odd” account application. You review the entry. It passed KYC. It passed your fraud risk checks. Everything seems fine. But by Monday morning you have an assortment of similar accounts that are attempting odd purchases, or exhibiting high risk behavior. Yet the only thing they have in common is they applied in all caps. At least that is all you can see from yo

It's a question that sounds simple but turns out to be surprisingly hard to answer, especially in the early months after a model goes live. Part of what makes it hard is timing. In a credit business, the outcomes you care most about take time to materialize. A model trained to predict severe delinquency at 12 months on book can't tell you much about whether it's working after two weeks in production. You have to build toward that answer gradually, using a sequence of leading

A founder's framework for turning target market, risk, and rewards strategy into a credit card product that actually works You've decided to build a credit card. Maybe you're deep in conversations with a sponsor bank, or weighing a BaaS partner against a full build. Either way, somewhere between the pitch deck and the term sheet, a harder question shows up: what should this card actually look like? Practically speaking: What are the terms and features? APR. Credit limits. Fee

The honest answer — and the four factors that determine whether it takes 60 days or 8 months (or never!). The Question Every Lending Fintech Founder Eventually Asks You've validated the concept. The product roadmap is drafted. The pitch deck is sharp. And someone on your team (usually someone who's done this before) says: "We need to start talking to sponsor banks." The follow-up question comes immediately: "How long is that going to take?" The honest answer is: it depends. B

It's one of the first questions we hear from fintech founders considering a credit card launch: "How long is this actually going to take?" (That, and “how much money will this take?”, but that’s for another blog post) The honest answer is: it depends. But that's not a cop-out — it's the most useful thing you can take into this decision. Because the timeline for launching a credit card program varies by a factor of two or more depending on the choices you make before you write

Launching a credit card program can be an exciting adventure, but it’s also full of challenges that can be significant barriers to getting to launch. In this post, we break down the top three hardest aspects of launching a credit card program: raising equity capital, securing a debt facility, and signing a sponsor bank partner deal with economics that work for a new program. Getting your arms around these challenges can help you navigate the biggest complexities of building a

The era of postmodern card issuance is here. The card issuance landscape has entered its third phase of growth since its dawn in the 1970s and its rapid modernization phase in the 2000s. We call the current phase the era of postmodern card issuance. The postmodern phase is enabled by two technology unlocks: tokenization and AI-powered workflows. Specifically, tokenization unlocks liquidity previously trapped in seemingly offline assets and experiences, allowing builders to re

"I've got the funding, the vision, and the market opportunity. My investors are excited about our credit card program launch. But when I look at my current team of a couple of engineers and a product manager, I realize I’m missing key players. What roles do I actually need to hire before we can responsibly launch a credit card program?" If you're a founder asking yourself this question, you're not alone—and you're asking it at exactly the right time. The Credit Card Reality C

The Document Nobody Wants to Write, Until They Have to You've got the product vision. You've mapped the user journey. You've had the early conversations with a sponsor bank. And then someone on the other side of the table asks: "Can you send us your credit policy?" Cue the internal scramble. For most fintech founders, the credit policy feels like a formality — a thick document full of banking jargon that exists to check a compliance box. But here's the truth: the credit polic