Visa Invests in Credit Card Provider Deserve After BlockFi Credit Card Success

Visa’s vice-pres­i­dent of cryp­to has expressed pos­i­tive sen­ti­ments regard­ing the company’s invest­ment in Deserve, and looks for­ward to more part­ner­ships with cryp­to com­pa­nies to dri­ve engage­ment and loy­al­ty programs.

Visa has announced its invest­ment in Deserve, a com­pa­ny that pro­vides turnkey cred­it card ser­vices for the dig­i­tal world. Deserve has seen sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess with the Block­Fi Visa cred­it card. The card rewards 1.5% in Bit­coin for each pur­chase, mak­ing it easy to acquire Bit­coin, with­out hav­ing to go through an exchange. The pay­out increas­es to 2% after $50,000 is spent. A Block­Fi account is nec­es­sary to receive rewards.

Deserve’s trump card is its frictionless turnkey solutions

Block­Fi announced its plans for a cred­it card in Dec 2020. By using Deserve’s tech­nol­o­gy, they are able to acquire new cus­tomers. Deserve’s tech­nol­o­gy is able to expe­dite the cred­it card appli­ca­tion process, enabling cus­tomers to set up cards in dig­i­tal wal­lets in min­utes. It has a robust onboard­ing flow that still ensures strong iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion and under­writ­ing while reduc­ing fric­tion. Deserve uses machine learn­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and its under­writ­ing process relies upon FICO scores, income, and employ­ment data. 

Cryp­to rewards cards have been rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing rewards and loy­al­ty pro­grams, by pro­vid­ing end-users with fun­gi­ble cryp­tocur­ren­cy rewards for pur­chas­es. When a cus­tomer pur­chas­es at a cer­tain retail­er and is reward­ed points, the cus­tomer could only redeem those rewards at the same retail­er, which they may nev­er vis­it again. Bit­coin rewards give cus­tomers a greater incen­tive to engage in retail spending.

Mastercard and Visa making inroads into credit card fintechs

Deserve is a Palo-Alto-based cred­it-card start­up that pro­vides a cloud plat­form for part­ners to launch cred­it prod­ucts on scal­able infra­struc­ture at a rapid pace. They use real-time data pro­cess­ing and Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­faces (APIs), and Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Kits (SDKs) to replace lega­cy batch pro­cess­ing. Deserve can cre­ate proof-of-con­cept pro­grams in 90 days by using the cloud plat­form, and a mobile-focused approach, beat­ing the 24-month time frame typ­i­cal­ly tak­en to launch a cred­it card scheme using lega­cy sys­tems mired in bureaucracy.

Gold­man Sachs, Mas­ter­card Inc., and Ally Finan­cial Inc.’s strate­gic invest­ment arm were ini­tial back­ers of Deserve. The CEO believes that Deserve is to the cred­it card indus­try what Insta­gram was to Kodak. 

Com­pa­nies can use its ser­vices to offer dig­i­tal cred­it cards that can be applied for and used on Android and Apple devices. Mas­ter­card cer­ti­fied Deserve’s Dig­i­tal First Card, which was the first ful­ly-dig­i­tal cred­it card expe­ri­ence in the world. 

Gem­i­ni recent­ly part­nered with Mas­ter­card to offer a card that gives clients 3% back on din­ing pur­chas­es in any cryp­tocur­ren­cy offered on the exchange, 2% on gro­cery pur­chas­es, and 1% on all oth­er pur­chas­es. Web­Bank issued the card in the U.S.

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