I See A New Brand

Seen is a credit builder card from brand Snap Finance (as a rebrand). The Seen card is issued by Coastal Community Bank, which is rapidly becoming one of the largest fintech credit card sponsors. According to the rebrand announcement, Seen has issued more than 100,000 cards in the past two years, which is pretty darn good for a startup. The Snap rebrand continues on as a buy-now, pay-later type construct with lease-to-own, installment lending, and retail installment contracts for consumers with lower credit scores.

Do you feel seen?

The Seen card doesn’t require a security deposit and reports to all three major credit bureaus. The cards carry annual fees from $0 to $75, a 35.99% APR, and credit limits up to $3,000. Currently, the cards are application-only (meaning they found you in the bureau data and sent you an invitation). Unlike other recent credit builder cards, a linked checking account is not required.

Crate & Barrel Card Launches

Imprint, the fintech credit card program manager, has officially launched its co-branded card with Crate & Barrel, which is issued by First Bank & Trust. I think this is the first card Imprint has issued with this bank, where previous cards have been issued by First Electronic Bank. Everyone is first (except when they’re Mercury)! Anyway, First Bank & Trust has been quiet in the fintech game recently, but has been working with fintech issuers for years. Back in the day, they issued the Final Card, which turned into the Apple Card.

Who's kids are named Hudson and Grace? You know those siblings are out there. (We had to make a black background for an all-white card)

The new card has no annual fee and a strong set of rewards: 10% cash back at Crate & Barrel brands, 4% at other home furnishing/home retailers (which is interesting as you might think they are competitive), grocery purchases, apparel retailers (through March 2026), and 1% everywhere else.  It’s a good deal.

In addition, you can trade the 10% cashback for a 0% interest period of up to 24 months, depending on the size of your purchase. 

Imprint continues to make solid progress in the retailer co-brand category, and this is a strong offer! Most of my first kitchen came from Crate & Barrel, so I am only a little biased.

New Citizens Business Card

I recently covered the relaunch of Citizens’ consumer card products. Last week, the bank launched a new business product, Citizens Edge, which incorporates fintech aspects, including integrated travel booking and expense management powered by Navan.

edge card on an edge

The new card includes features that have long been missing from traditional issuers, such as easy virtual cards and integrated travel and expense management. 

This is a larger part of Mastercard’s new push to serve the “mid-market” company, defined as $10 MM-$100 MM in annual revenue and 50-200 employees. This push includes Navan (connected to this new card) and Trovata. While small businesses can often utilize the simplest commercial version of a consumer product, large businesses are practically their own economies. In contrast, the mid-market faces the challenge of needing large business tools while only having the budget of a small business. 

A lot of fintech companies are pushing hard in this part of the industry (including Navan themselves), but mid-market companies also require traditional loans from traditional issuers. Excited to see this sort of collaboration.

How many cards is too many?

Readers may know that I have about 30 credit cards (including business cards). It’s too many in my opinion, but call it a habit, a problem, or a professional side effect (all those client cards to acquire for testing). 

Last week, the New York Times published an article on people with 50 cards. I have been deep in the credit card game for 20 years now, having learned about it from my fellow traveling business consultants at Deloitte in 2004. However, chasing the endless sign-up bonuses stopped being worth it for me when I realized how many rewards points I banked over the pandemic.

This is not fifty cards and it is still too many for me.

For folks in the rewards industry, nothing in the article is earth-shattering. A growing number of users practice churning. (Ask me about the spreadsheets I saw when researching this for Wallaby.) Churning is the practice of signing up for a new credit card purely for the sign-up bonus and then cancelling the card after that bonus is earned. 

Side note. We had one person churn the Grand Reserve World Mastercard. They weren’t into wine, but we also offered fancy chocolates in our rewards catalog. They redeemed for all of them!

Many people don’t spend enough to do this at scale, so they pair it with manufactured spending, which is cycling dollars through the system (e.g., by buying gold bars at Costco and then getting cash back). And while those folks are probably thrilled with the value of that gold bar now, the question for me is always, “Is this worth my mental energy?” Plus, what’s that guy going to do with his 19 million rewards points?

Me, Elsewhere

You can now view my opening keynote from FintechDevCon 2025 on YouTube. Thank you to the entire Moov/FintechDevCon team for inviting me. It was a great conference and I look forward to attending next year!

CardsFTW

CardsFTW, released weekly on Wednesdays, offers insights and analysis on new credit and debit card industry products for consumers and providers. CardsFTW is authored and published by Matthew Goldman and the team at Totavi, a boutique consulting firm specializing in fintech product management & marketing. We bring real operational experience that varies from the earliest days of a startup to high-growth phases and public company leadership. Visit www.totavi.com to learn more.

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