Episode 26

full
Published on:

9th Nov 2022

Building a Financial Community with Vital Card Co-Founder and COO, Adam Spencer - Episode 26

Adam Spencer is the Co-Founder & COO of Vital a company bringing you a credit card that pays you to share and spend responsibly. He shares how the pandemic evolved the company's vision and how it serves everyone from the affluent to the underserved and underrepresented.

Three things in this episode that we dive into.

1️⃣ How Vital Card Pivoted during Covid

2️⃣ eCommerce with Vital Cash

3️⃣ Helping people Build a Path to Good Credit

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Links:

Vital Card

Website: https://www.vitalcard.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vitalcard

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vitalcreditcard

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vitalcreditcard/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vitalcreditcard

TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@vitalcreditcard

Adam Spencer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-spencer-elev8withme

Time Stamps:

00:00 Building a Financial Community with Vital Card Co-Founder and COO, Adam Spencer - Episode 26

01:40 Intro

02:04 Reformed Banker Finds a Home in Fintech

04:48 Perspective on Delivering Fintech Solutions

07:49 How Vital Card Began

13:46 Evolving the Vision

14:51 The CAC Albatross

18:14 The COVID Pivot

21:02 Gaining Market Insights

25:18 The Vital Mission

25:47 Responsible Spending

26:17 Understanding Credit

31:27 Helping FinTech and Consumers

36:49 Huge Launch

37:30 Mobile Native Experience

38:05 Premium Cards for Everyone

40:42 What Color will you Choose?

42:54 Cash Card vs. Credit Card

44:57 eCommerce with Vital Cash

47:57 Rewarded for Social Sharing

50:04 Helping the Underserved and Underrepresented

50:50 Building a Path to Good Credit

Supporting Partners

Support is provided by Solvpath, an A.I.-driven customer support system that uses a visual format and self-serve technology to quickly and effectively resolve issues, resulting in satisfying support experiences for customers.

Get the best customer support system for your business. Get Solvpath. Get started by visiting www dot Get Solvpath dot com www.getsolvpath.com

This is a Production of Diamond D3, Media

ABOUT:

Vital Card: At VITAL, we’re building more than a credit card. We’re building a financial community. By “community,” we don’t mean people who happen to live in the same neighborhood or shop at the same stores. We envision a community in the realest sense of the word: One where members lift each other up while expanding their own financial horizons and raising their credit scores. One where people aren’t discounted because they made a late payment or because they haven’t had a chance to build credit. In short: a community where better credit and the nicer things in life are within reach. On your phone. In your wallet. In your hands.

Adam Spencer: Adam serves as Co-Founder and COO of Vital Card. With a deeply rooted past of nearly 25 years of experience in Financial Services and Payments. Before Vital card, Adam enjoyed a highly rewarding and regarded path to success at both JP Morgan Chase, & BBVA. Adam served in Sr. Executive & Global Leadership positions spanning North America, Latin America, Turkey, and Spain.

Tedd Huff: President & Founder of Diamond D3, a professional services consulting firm focused on global payments and marketing. He is also a video podcast host and producer of Fintech Confidential and Head of Corporate Strategy at Corvia. 

Over the past 24 years, he has contributed to FinTech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for Global Payments OpenEdge, Heartland Payments, Nuvei, and TSYS, among others, focusing on growth while delivering innovation, process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.

Diamond D3, Media: A media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally.

Transcript

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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We went with MasterCard and used their

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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digital first, just like Apple, we just really realized there was one big piece of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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the card that was a different mouse trap even than what Apple had done, which was,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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you can get your cash, you can use your cash, you can go to an atm, pull it out.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You can do peer to peer payments All good but you couldn't do e-commerce

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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and then we got the jets.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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All right.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Awesome.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Hey, Al, Adam, welcome to the show.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Thank you.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Be before we dive into Vital Card, which I believe is one of your most

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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interesting ventures and truly is going to change how we perceive

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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social commerce coming forward.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Can you share with.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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How you got into FinTech?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I dumbed my way into it, I

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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guess from a banking career.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So you, you know, I like to say I'm a, a reforming banker, but I think

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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once you are one, you stay one.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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But , uh, I was in banking for 23 years and all at, um, in between

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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JP Morgan and then B B V A, so a global, um, bank plus a global bank.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, so did everything and saw everything at scale.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Uh, had lots of interactions with the card brands.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Had lots of interactions inside of the FinTech space because I also,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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uh, my last couple of years at B B V A, I helped with the ventures group.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So we had a hundred million dollars that yearly we would dump

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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into what we saw was great te.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, we, I was a part of the team that bought, uh, Simple, which was one of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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the first digital banks, you know, that was out there outta Portland.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, and then we put some of the first money into Dowalla, um, as peer to peer

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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and money movement was really starting to happen from a app standpoint.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, I had a cup, a client, uh, that I had helped, uh, in the,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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uh, merchant acquiring space.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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He had made some money, um, a few times off of a couple of deals that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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we had helped engineer at the bank with portfolios that were, um, going

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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outta business or had bad attrition rates and trying to save them.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So we cobbled some deals together for them and, uh, they decided that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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they wanted to raise money and go and really try to scale at a large

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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amount and then exit within two years.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I had a 23 year career banking, so I said, Hey, you know, why not?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Let's try this.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And, I put all the chips into the middle of the table, cashed out

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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my retirement, cashed out my 401k.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I wouldn't advise that for anybody and, and take a healthy penalty.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, but I figured I knew how to do this and, you know, I was gonna

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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be able to at least get it back.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, and that worked out luckily, but about two iterations later.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So we bought about 800 merchants off of a couple of, um, uh, I would say dying

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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portfolios and just kind of re-energized them with some basic technology.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And then, after about.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Two years.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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It was really 19 months before we actually went into raising money.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, we, uh, decided that we were gonna go earnestly all in, um, and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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we grew the book to about 55,000 merchants mostly, you know, inorganic.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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But we just did it through a large number of associations as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And, we ended up exiting, um, to Goldman Sachs and Prudential Capital.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And the, the story started really from there after that.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Wow.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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That journey just kind of goes all over the place.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Uh, not in a bad way Right.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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But, but just definitely takes you through that entire, entire

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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process and that entire flow from being in all those different roles,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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senior leadership, startup type areas, those different things.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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How has that shaped your perspective on FinTech delivering

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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better solutions to the market?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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When I was at the bank, I was always

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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very, um, skeptical just because you look at it in a very different view.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And then once I got into, um, really looking into the ventures programs and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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it was kind of more my, my job and my hide, if, you know, the money was spent

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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and it wasn't on anything, you know, that was going to expand and grow, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I obviously spent way more time with it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I realized almost 90%, I would say at least, um, of every senior leader or

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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entrepreneurial leader in any of these.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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All came from, you know, big commerce previous to that, banks,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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finance companies, insurance companies, a lot of tech guys.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, and they were all geniuses, you know, great, great minds.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And it all came down to the same thing is you'd have the best

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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product with no distribution.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You'd spend all your money on building product, no distribution, or you had a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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great sales force, you know, and they could sell anything, but they were slow

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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to innovate and then they had no money because, you know, it's a static state,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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you know, um, kind of growth cycle.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And you, even if you do 10% more, if you're doing hundreds of thousands of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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deals, 10% more is not enough to, you know, build, uh, all this new technology.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, and then the other pieces of it, you know, quite frankly

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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was just, um, from Distribu.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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To technology.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And then they had people that just couldn't market.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You know, They knew exactly how to build it, but they didn't know how to market it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So, you know, after I saw a lot of that being put together, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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know, I just realized the evolution of this is less about products.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Products is, it's not easy.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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It's very, very challenging.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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But you know, products, you can kind of follow the path of where they're

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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going and then you can execute a little better and still make a great living.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You know, selling the same product, the innovative products.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You know, I tell people a lot just of what we see in the market, and I've

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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seen this so much from the banking, it's like, There's only so much you wanna be a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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trailblazer most of the time in FinTech, you know, you want to be like the close

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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pioneer behind, because the trailblazer usually shows everybody the path.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Sometimes the trailblazer goes to jail and you know, especially in FinTech.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Yes, yes.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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In FinTech.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And then the, the pioneer seemed to get all the, the, you know, press afterwards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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But, um, you know, it, it's like one of those things that pays to be innovative,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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but it pays more to be innovative and then persistent and adapt that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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That's the biggest thing.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You know, any of these places that we've helped and that we continue

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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to try to strive to be, they're the pivot is the biggest difference.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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How they pivot.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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So I can only imagine seeing all

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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those different things and seeing that problem with distribution and, and

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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seeing great products, it just, maybe just didn't have enough oomph to it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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, for lack of a better phrase, I would love if you could take a moment when

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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you and your co-founder, Chris Bridges, decided like, Vital Card must be created.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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Kind of bring us to like that moment, that aha moment.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I have to be not take, uh, too much of any

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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of the credit for the original concept.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You know, Chris is an amazing marketer and, and really, you know, brand and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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marketing and product is, is what he's.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Really amazing.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And, um, there was a original, um, co-founder that he had as well, that was

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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a really good operator, never in payments.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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However, um, previously, and you know, he ended up, um, doing a lot

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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of the things with Chris just as far as finding people that would

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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be interested in a FinTech idea.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, they thought a credit card would be a good idea, but it was

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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one of multiple different ideas.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, and when I met Chris, his previous, uh, co-founder that had at least raised

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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an initial couple hundred thousand dollars with, um, you know, wanted to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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take a different direction, so when I sat down and we talked, you had this

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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idea about this sharing model, you know, was, um, Uber and Lyft and Airbnb

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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were like right after second or third year where it was really coming out.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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This was about four and a half years ago.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And you know, the idea was just around, you know, everybody that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Uh, c we're friends with that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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We're close with, you know, half of them, it's, you only see 'em online, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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only see 'em on your social channels.

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You only see 'em on your media channels.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And we're talking about our kids and you know, my kids in general.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And, uh, just the entire opportunity of, you know, the generations

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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just share, they share everything.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Good, bad, and difference they share.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And that it became a sharing society.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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It was becoming a sharing society.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So we just talked about, you know, the model of, um, because he was

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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in acquiring at the time too.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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We were just talking about how MLMs and different things, that when you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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really look at it, it's not about the product, it's generally about

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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the community at the beginning.

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And the further you grow, the less about the community.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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The, the message stays, and then it becomes what it is,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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which is generally not good.

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The real parts of it were, Societies are grown up and fostering and sharing,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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you know, a lot of European countries, I used to work in many of them when, when

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I was, um, at B B V A we talked about how banks also, you know, have a lot

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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of social, um, I wouldn't say cultures, but it, it's definitely social, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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traits that kind of bleed over outside of the US into the banking system.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And one of the things that he had asked me about was, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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if we're looking at cards, what would be the biggest difference?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And I launched a couple of cards, um, that were outside of the US and they were all

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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built on this model that we also have.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, which is where I saw it, that the banks don't hold small consumer

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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debits, or I'm sorry, credits.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So when they issue a credit, if it's a few thousand to $10,000, it never

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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sits on the bank's balance sheet.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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They don't believe that, you know, that should be what deposit holders have to.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Uh, share out with their deposits.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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They would rather get interest and make money on their money, um, versus just

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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have supporting all the small, uh, debt.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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They figure small debt, shouldn't take 25 years to pay off the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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novel, novel concept for us.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So, um, I, I watched how it worked.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I watched how they would sell into, you know, the debt markets.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I watched how, um, you know, they would have multiple different,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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um, what I'd say is kind of data sharing activities and points.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Um, everybody knew everything about their cardholders.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Everybody knew everything about the way that, um, the debt cycles would work.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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They knew when they should run.

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Um, merchant funded campaigns.

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All good things.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You know, that all good card programs.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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Minus the fact that, you know, there was this extreme pressure on the backside to

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always keep attri low, make sure that the customer service was really, really good

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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because somebody had to buy the debt.

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Nobody wanted to buy any debt where you never knew your customers,

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they couldn't react to you.

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There was no, um, positive, uh, interactions with them

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after they issued the card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So, you know, you live a service first, kind of operating world

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when, when you're corporate exec.

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So I thought the message was really good.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I thought, you know, this is really, uh, gonna be an impossible concept.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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I thought back then, you know, in the US market, just with how

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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saturated it is with credit cards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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But I told him the model.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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He said, We should really think on this.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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And, and, you know, if we could do the debt, we should, uh, we,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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we should really give it a go.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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then it was the sponsor bank question.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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You, you know, how many,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

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always the sponsor, bank question?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

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So, because I was a banker and because

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I had, um, just had left banking, it, I was fortunate enough to, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

be referred over, uh, by one of my attorneys that, that I had worked

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

with at the bank for many years.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

She had referred me over to, um, a small bank that had just, uh, bought

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

out a couple of other assets, um, in Arkansas and Tennessee, and they

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

really wanted to get into payments.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, uh, I had just left a, a two decade plus career in banking and payments and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

asked if, uh, I do like a professional mentoring and professional, um, just

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

kind of a strategy wh when the time comes phone call position, it turned

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

into a board position afterwards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And that was a evolved bank trust.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, um, you know, I went to Scott, walked him through, um, kind of our idea.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They are heavily engaged and involved into the FinTech space.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Probably, you know, the most involved out of the, what I would say is a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

smaller, you know, regional bank.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, uh, you know, he's,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and they have a couple big names.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Oh, really?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Big.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Underneath the underneath of their

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

umbrella.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Treasury is $93 billion market cap.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I'd say it's pretty big.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mercury pretty big.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, he liked the concept.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We didn't know exactly how it was gonna flesh out.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

but he said, you know, put a plan together.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Come back to me.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I'm not, I'm not saying no.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, what I've learned in my career too is you never get compliance

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

or bank presidents or anybody else.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They were rarely gonna say yes, but the, the job is to get

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

them to not immediately say no.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So that we took that as a win and it started from there.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

The goal is not, yes, It's,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

the goal is just not, not no

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

yet.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Love it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Love it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

how has the vision evolved from that, that point when, you know, you guys

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

were looking at it, you started to get all the different things lined up.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

How has that vision evolved?

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

and that is not meant as a pun.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Yeah.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I, Or anything

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I was gonna say it if you weren't so

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, um, I, I think the three biggest differentiators of the card are

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

probably the three biggest evolutions.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The first one was, um, we talked about distribution, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

earlier the, the distribution there.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The, that was probably, um, the biggest aha moment for us as we started.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Just seeing the rise of social influencers and, you know, um, lots

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

of paid advertising, lots of, lots of people that you, you know, were

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

getting lots of different compensation or lots of different, um, what I

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

call dead cat bounces, you know, and all of these different things.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

When they were, they'd put out a Monster Energy drink with, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

some, you know, great big social influencer and you'd see it everywhere.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And that splash campaign, you know, makes a big difference in doing

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

things with, um, you know, short sales cycles like a credit card would.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we talked about.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The one thing that is generally the albatross of all banks that sell

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

credit cards or even um, any type of, of purchasing card is the marketing,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

like the spend on marketing and then the return to just get an, uh, not

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

only just a complete application, cuz that's one metric, but a, an approved

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

completed application is a huge expense.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, it's like 130 bucks generally on average that it costs for an

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

acquisition cost just to get 'em to fill out an application around most banks.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then it's about 210 to $225 once you complete all the CACs

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and, you know, do everything just to get that active customer.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we just looked, we looked at how many.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Cards you'd have to sell and then activate the cards on top of it,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

um, and then get them to use it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And we were like, You have to sell a lot of cards to do this.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I'm gonna bring you back.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Has you used an acronym that, that I, I'm aware of, but maybe some of

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

the, the audience isn't aware of?

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You said CACs.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mm-hmm.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

. Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

wasn't like slang for a cat.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

No, but I mean, you hear COGs, CACs,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, um, your customer acquisition costs, you know, it's, there's one thing

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that you learn when you build a product, which is you think it's just the product

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and the development and that's it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then you forget, Well, there's marketing spins that there's a big

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

piece of this, that once the product is actually done, you have a whole

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

other, , ball of wax that you have to, to get through, which is how do you.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

How much does it cost to market it?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then how much does the product even make?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And for how long are you gonna be in the red before it makes anything back?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, there's good products.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Managers usually don't get excited about anything until they

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

understand what the, the tax are gonna be to, to complete the sales.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, um, again, Chris being the, the ultimate brand guy that he is, he

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

just said, I'm, I'm not gonna go raise money just to have a bunch of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

other marketers or other people that I don't believe are good at this.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, which is generally true with banks.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I'm a, I'm a former banker.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I say it, so, you know, I, I wholeheartedly agreed, but we, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

kind of looked at each other and he, he came up with it far more than me

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and he said, You know, we're just gonna do this by social influence.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We're gonna let all the people sell this.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They'll just refer it and we'll make it really, really good for them to refer.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Really, really good for them to use it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, uh, we'll see how it goes.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, you know, as that progressed over the first call it, you know, six to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

eight months, we really mapped it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, started looking at a lot of the, the influencer models and looking at a lot

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

of the, uh, what I would say was were, um, you know, kind of the, the new, uh,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

gorilla marketing type things that were coming out on Twitter and Instagram.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And he knew a couple of guys in LA where he was at a time, went and did a very, uh,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

grassroots commercial that was just gonna go out on social pages and on Twitter.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, it was, it's a pretty cool commercial.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I mean, we haven't even released it and I think we're just gonna

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

refresh it cuz it's like still pretty, pretty topical and good.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, and he said, Let's just go see how this goes and we're

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

gonna build a lot of metrics.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We just did a simple web hooks, you know, kind of campaign and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

went and followed what we did.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, you know, after about I'd say six, seven weeks, we did about

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

150,000, you know, uh, applications into the, to what we, uh, had as

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

a landing page for the wait list.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, and you know, I, I think we would've probably got up and running B right then.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And you know, the story kind of pivots,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

like I said, all good pivots.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, but ours pivoted for the bad reasons.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It was for Covid and, you know, at that point there was

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

no money in, in the market.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

There was nobody that wanted to go out and put out consumer debts when nobody

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

knew how spending was gonna look.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, all of this kind of hit the brakes, you know, for a year.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, and then after that is really how we've had to reenergize, refocus.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And during those refocuses, I mean, those were the, the second and the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

third biggest changes one, um, we, we knew that fico just from being in the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

financial services industry and just seeing what's happened to, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

people in terms of their earnings, in terms of what they, they look for, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

in, in kind of value in consumer products.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Now, um, credit was getting used a lot differently.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We just.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Uh, we, we want to attract the social shares.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We want to attract those that are gonna use the cards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I, from a banking standpoint know, um, you know, these Gen Zs and millennial

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

population, not only, you know, do I raise a bunch of them, uh, in, on my house,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

but, you know, uh, we just know that it's a high, high target, high, um, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, kind of focused customer segment.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we wanted to make the card around 18 to 39 year olds, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, the Gen Zs and millennials.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And what we have found through a lot of this back testing was thin files,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, nobody could get the cards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Apple did a really, really good job of, you know, allowing families to share their

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

own credit lines, build up small credits for their kids or, you know, young adults.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then also just having a balance sheet and having the confidence to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

interact with the customers and the customers to respond, which is what

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we've, uh, taken great pride into as well, and why we're so confident.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then, you know, the third piece of it was just around the brand.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, our brand was.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Shared everywhere we had.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, a big piece of this, you know, is based on your kind of viral coefficiency.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

If you're gonna, if you're gonna do everything on sharing, people better

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

prove it out and share it for you.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, when we talked about getting an app done, you know, it was

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

again, 130 bucks roughly for bank.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We, we were getting people to come in for around 14 cents, you know, on

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

paid ads or paid clicks to get that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And when we, they would come into the environment to, to fill out the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

information for all the pre-launch, they were bringing on average

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

five and a half friends for free.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, the vital Coefficiency at five and a half was, you know, a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

astounding, and, and, uh, we hoped that we would be able to carry that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

through, you know, during Covid.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And it's proven out, you know, now that we're ready to get in the market,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we've done a start engine campaign.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We've relaunched and put out what the physical cards will look like now,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and we feel really good about it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

you've dove into, I mean, these are the

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

types of things, um, That really you have to have to test, retest, test again.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You guys have done a lot of that, not just with the individual

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

customers, but also with experts in the, the marketing segment.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Experts in the financial, additional experts in those two areas.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

. Cause you and Chris both got those covered, but you know, that, that,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

that there are other aspects and that, that's really interesting

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

to see and, and like how did those experiences with the, the launch

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Programs help.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

There's a lot of really interesting, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

kind of social, uh, experiments is what I would call 'em, you know, cuz really

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you don't know how it's gonna react.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And the, the groups that you use, we, you know, used philosophy and, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

uh, did a, another couple of groups that, you know, have subsequently

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

kind of expanded and grown and turned into a lot of other things.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So people probably wouldn't know who they were, but they would know the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

names, you know, those that founded it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But, um, we did product journeys.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, I think we ended up doing 45 different user, um, kind of, uh, proto

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

prototypes and, and we would go through and say, you know, this is their age band.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

This is their income band.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

This is what they like to do socially.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

This is what they look like, you know, personally from a, a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

debt and a credit standpoint and a friends and a social stand.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So you get to, you get to really kind of test a lot of, um, theories,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

but then it's proven out because you go out and you do service.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And you know, we went in New York City, Chris had moved from LA to New York City.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, instead of paying to, to just go and continue to put on a road show for

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

a year when we knew we weren't gonna get any debt, we knew that the markets were

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

gonna be stale, waiting for Covid to pass.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We just spent the, the money that we had, that we were bootstrapping

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

along the way, um, and just did all these product journeys.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we built out what we thought, you know, were interesting surveys

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

about how do you use your apps?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Which apps do you like?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Why do you like it?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, it was great because, um, Robin Hood came along during this

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

time and, and you know, it's, um, self sourced kind of user containment.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, and the way that everybody interacts with it, uh, really gave us a lot of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

good feedback and good road mapping.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The Apple card obviously was out and was doing really well with Apple Cash,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

so that gave us a really good, um, kind of lever that we've built on around

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

our vital cash, um, and kind of ways that ours is different and ways that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we, you know, kind of got to see how consumers were unfolding and re uh,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

introducing themselves back into society.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Uh, we just found out all of the things that we felt like we know that are

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

important, but more important, you know, A hundred and some odd thousand people that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

had signed up for this thing that we had to keep them, you know, at least informed,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

much less, you know, excited about it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And the interaction that we still had constantly with them.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You, you know, through our test environments and through, um, just

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

interacting with their social pages and social media, it became pretty apparent to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

us, you know, this, this thing has legs.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, the idea has legs and everything became more social during covid.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, everybody shared everything.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, figured it's, it's the right time.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Well, that was the only way

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

for people during that time

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

To, to really have any sort of

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

interaction with human beings outside of their four, uh, four

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

walls is a but within their house.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

household.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And so, you know, that the, the acceleration of, of digitization

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

mm-hmm.

- Host, Fintech Confidential:

in everybody's life just completely exploded.

- Host, Fintech Confidential:

And now you getting to the point where, people are buying things

- Host, Fintech Confidential:

online, which means they're not, they're not able to go to a store.

- Host, Fintech Confidential:

So they are buying things online.

- Host, Fintech Confidential:

How are they gonna figure out?

- Host, Fintech Confidential:

It's, it's a good product.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

that means that they're asking, gonna

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

ask their friends and their family, and maybe they'll just see that

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

somebody said something good about it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And that really, that social capital really gets built up a lot faster today

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

than what it has in, in any time before.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

A big thing that our card is built

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

on is, you know, uh, teaching everyone around credit, Right.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, credits is really, you know, important to these two populations that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we're trying to, to serve and, and help.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But, you know, Covid did a good job in that with helping us because nobody

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

would give credit, you know, to the 18 to 21 year old thin file user,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

the vital mission is outlined on the

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

website and, it's written like this, I'm gonna read it so I don't get it wrong.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

To empower our members and future users with income opportunities earned from

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

community building and responsible spending that's a powerful mission.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

It's not easy to attain, but kind of give us an idea of like a

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

couple, maybe three or four things that Vital is doing differently.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Than what's in the market today?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It goes pretty deep when, when we

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

talk about responsible spending.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It's not just, you know, you spending responsibly on your card, it's

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

sharing, you know, what that means.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We had this huge kind of grassroots community that came out after

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we had done our wait list.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

What we did learn during all of our surveys were, you know, Gen Zs and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

millennials don't like making money off of their friends and family, but

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

they do love sharing ways that they make money or they got something good

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

or could, um, share with somebody else so they can get good as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We thought, you know, most people don't get a card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They're not told why other than the, you know, the adverse action letters

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that come in and it's got either something that's just as cold as this

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

was your score and it needed to be this.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

There's nothing that tells you how to do anything better to get it, um,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

to improve it may say you had too many inquiries, but it doesn't say

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

what ones really hurt you versus not.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

What we wanted to do, which was empower them to understand

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

how does credit actually work?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

What do you need it for, what do you not need it for, and what do they look at?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

In this 18 to 39 year old demographic, you start to see, you know, It's thin files.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They don't get any credit for the fact that they may have 15 bills

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that they're paying every month.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We started to just watch things that happen with Experian and watched things

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

with, happened with, um, you know, covid with all of the, the medical bills and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

different things like that, that were starting to get, um, kind of excused out

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

of payments, in terms of their flows on what would go to a 30 or 60 or 90 day,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, reporting against a customer.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we just said, We, we should do something that helps the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

responsible part of this one.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We should teach 'em about credit.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So every time they make a purchase or every time they wanna make a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

purchase, they can just interact with the app and it'll say, This is what

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

it would do if you didn't pay it off.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

This is what it would do if you only paid it on the minimums.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

This is what it would do if you paid XYZ a month.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So as we started doing that, you know, there's such a.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Range of, of things that can happen to you from the three bureaus that we said, let's

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

not, let's not test that thing that's been broken forever, you know, and try to teach

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

people on how to work something broken.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Let's say, you know, the only thing you should care about is

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

the cards taking care of you.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, we want to be top of wallet for them and just a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

thing that they use in their life every day, just like their phone.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, so we just said we're gonna do a vital score, we'll have their vital score

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and that's gonna be, you know, around lots of things like their community,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

um, spend and what they're getting from the folks that they referred.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It's gonna be how well they're doing in their credit life and what does that do.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we also started talking about nobody incentives you to pay

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

anything down, that you don't get an award when you pay stuff off.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

That's been a big piece

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

and a big driver for.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

The Gen Z and, for those individuals, that are not comfortable, don't

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

want to build out a credit line that have decided to jump into the

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

buy now pay later arena, because they don't want to have bad credit.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

They don't want to have to owe anybody anything.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

This sounds like, it's a nice way for them to, to really see how it impacts.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Because a lot of the cases, like even for my oldest child, it, the fear is

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

destroying credit for when they need it and not knowing, as you mentioned,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

not knowing what's impacting it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And it sounds like the vital card is, has cuz.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Solve that issue as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I always have to meter myself, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

raising five sons, I think I told you this once before, it's like age 15 to 25,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you do everything to ruin your credit.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

25 to 35, you repair your credit, 35 and on you actually use your credit.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So yeah, it was really more of when do people have it and when

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

does it matter to them the most.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And it's generally right in this age band, um, you know, first jobs

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

outta college, first times that they have responsibilities on their own.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, you know, it goes back to that thing of, you know, what were

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

they actually getting credit for?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And not like the credit score, but like, what are you actually getting a re a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

positive report or a positive, um, you know, feedback from the, the people you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

have a contract with your creditors.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, and what we started to really look at.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Plaid, you know, does a really good job of obviously feeding data into

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

those that want to understand it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

, Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

scientist on our team as well.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I had done credit for so many years.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

We just looked at it and said, God, there's this really big, you know,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

gap in between what you get counted against you on your debt to income ratio

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

versus what goes nowhere in your favor.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

If you have 50 different bills that are on your checking account and your

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

checking account's pristine, then you still have money at the end of the month.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

That's truly your cash, right?

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

It, it's your cash on hand.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So you could pay your bill a little better if I knew, you know, how that worked more

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

than your credit, where you only have one file, what, what one file gonna tell me.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So, you know, and generally your first file's gonna be

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

a pretty low limit, so you.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Credit all, um, credit was a big function on that.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And then two, you know, was what happens if you don't get approved?

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

What, why would this be great?

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Um, you know, if we could only target the ones that get approved.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

That's one of the pieces.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I mean, you know, you guys have been very strong on diversity and

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

inclusion, and that goes beyond what you see in the news today.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

it goes all the way down to people who have no credit history at all.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

people that have credit, but maybe if come across hard times and, and haven't been

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

able to keep it up to the way they want.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And then, and then the people who have great credit, you, you've been able to

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

figure out a way to bridge that gap.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I know that's important to, to you and to Chris and to the, the vital card.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

How, how does that help The industry, uh, of FinTech as well

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

as the consumers themselves.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The thing that we've done is,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, we partnered with, with different folks at the different credit

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

bureaus and we had three and a half million use cases, you know, from

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

age bands, from 18 all the way to 85.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And we just did hundreds of thousands of iterations.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

with, um, you know, certain scores, certain thin files, certain job

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

histories, certain bank histories.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And we made a conscious effort, like with any product you have to hang your

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

hat on, you know, what do you think that this product is going to, to value?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And what we said was, you know, the last 12 months of your financial, uh, kind

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

of life and its performance is the best indicator of what we think we're gonna

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

get out of the next 12 months for you.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Especially coming out of Covid.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Cuz what we saw was, you know, pre covid the same groups of Gen Zs and millennials.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They would get a credit, the first credit that they would

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

get generally a credit card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, and with six months they would have four.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And within that six months, we've found over the three and a half

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

million use cases that over 70% of them all had volume, uh, up to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

90% of their, uh, credit limit.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So they would get a card quickly, learn how to use the card, and then

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

get four more cards and they'd be maxed out on four cards within six months.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We really had to focus on, well, how would they pay it back, you know, and, and jobs.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, you know, it's, it's been an interesting rollercoaster there as

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

far as what unemployment was or not.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Unemployment, and there's still a lot of cash in this

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

country, even with unemployment.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We looked at that and said, let's just look at their ability to repay.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Stop with the credit, stop with the score.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And what that score drives you to think, because that prejudice is what your

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

real outlook is on what they could be.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And they do pay their bills, most of their bills.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You, you know, 60 some odd percent.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Are on recurring payments that come out of their checking account.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And nobody gets any credit for those types of things because the Gen Zs

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

millennials have Netflix and Hulu and all of the apps from their phone

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

being withdrawn from their app store, they've got their gym membership.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, everything comes out of on recurring payments.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And recurring payments are things that most people, especially in FinTech

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, if you tried to get somebody on autopay, it's just a recurring autopay.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It's less than 15%.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Generally it's a hard thing to do.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

they wanna tell you when you can access the account.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know for that, the fact that this new generation of consumers,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, they don't necessarily trust the big brands, the big

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

banks, the big box, um, brands.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But for some reason, they trust the fact that those big box brands, or just

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

anybody in general, if they have an agreement with them, they have put a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

lot more use into auto debit autopay.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And obviously the, the merchants, that do that, like the Netflixes and Hulus,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that's their model, you know, that recurring billing and subscription model.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So again, stars aligning, I think maybe a little bit, you know, from a product,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

um, learnings and launch standpoint.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But all things that, you know, have really just helped us where we've

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

had these ideas four years ago, maybe it could be a, a good idea.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Now it's, you know, come to fruition, you know, without a lot of, any

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

of our doing, but, you know, all working towards our advantage.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

One of the things that, uh, to help

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

educate in the process is that the card gives, credit score rewards.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

just like, gives spending reward.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So you're, you're rewarding them for doing the spending and

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

you're doing them, rewarding them for paying back the spending.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

and then, then the other really cool part is like, and when I want to share that

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

with my friends, I also get rewarded.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So you're hitting those three pillars.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

That, that drive the behavior that you're looking for and that's a little unique.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Yeah.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

In the marketplace.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Non-monetary rewards for us too is big.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, we, if you improve your credit score, you know, 50 points after that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

was one of your personal goals that you interact with the app and tell it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we give monetary rewards and non-monetary rewards, meaning will drop their rate, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, for 90 days to 2.99% for everything, for growing their credit scores.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So you, you know, it's to your point, sharing your successes, sharing you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

your, uh, um, kind of satisfaction with, with us as their financial partners.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, sharing it with their friends and having their friends spend,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

because they can responsibly tell their friends, This is what I did,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

This is what it'll do for you.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It's not always about the cash.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

If you go to a restaurant, and I do this all the time with my kids, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, and I see their friends that come, they all split everything 50 50.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It's very democratic, you know, But they'll do it all with, you know, four

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

different cell phones, you and Venmo or Cash App or Zelle or PayPal or whatever,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, And it's down to the penny.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

as we thought about the sharing parts of it and thought, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, nobody shares their points.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And if you do, you have to pay money to share your points and it

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

costs you more money to get points.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And most of the time we want them around each other too.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We'd like to have our vital card and vital community members do things together.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, that's the point of the, the social aspect of, of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

commerce and sharing inside of that when you bring that together.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we said we should just let everybody share their points with other people,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, not pay to share your points, but donate and do, and you know, that was

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

our last kind of lever of kind of the.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The, how are we different?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, we want to give monetary and non-monetary rewards, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know, just for being a good person.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

for those who are listening or watching

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

that, that, that are getting excited and wanna find out about this, you

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

guys are in soft launch right now.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

test cards

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

in the market.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yep.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So you've got, got the cards out in the market that, that people are

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

using and just proving out a lot of the things that we've, we've talked

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

about in day to day life, right?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

can you share how many, how many cards?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Are expected to go out on the full launch date?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

If we could walk away with, in the first six months, have 150 to 200,000

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

card users, I'd say that we've, we, we've validated our market and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

proven that, you know, this was a good choice for us to kind of, uh,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

soldier through for the last four.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Adam, you guys have spent a lot of time

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

focusing in on the experience, whether it, it's a really nice mobile app.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You've got a great mobile, ex mobile first experience on the web.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You've, you've really built out the rewards program to really give a

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

topnotch digital first experience.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

But you didn't just stop at the digital experience.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Oh, and I did forget this is, um, this will or.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Gonna be able to be loaded to all the digital wallets too.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It is.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So, so we're still expanding

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

on that digital wallet.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mm-hmm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

that digital experience.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

But the physical experience, you guys, you guys didn't cheap out on that.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You didn't just do some, some screen printed, uh, plastic card.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You guys dove into a metal card, just like the Apple card that everybody loves.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Just like some of the high end American Express cards or some

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

of the really high end cards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yep.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And, and I'd love to understand

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

what was the, the philosophy to dive into such a high end card?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah, so, you know, one of the things

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that we, uh, again, did through a lot of surveys and a lot of, um, just.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Understanding what makes it to the top of your wallet?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, in the digital wallet, obviously we wanted to give the experience the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

exact same, you know, that it, it should be on all premiums, like what you said.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, if it's the app, you shouldn't lose anything on

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

the, the mobile optimized site.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, you shouldn't lose anything when you're going from your

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

wallet to the physical card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Because our, digital first product and we went with MasterCard and used their

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

digital first, just like Apple, only because, um, we just really realized

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

there was one big piece of the card that was a a different mouse trap even than

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

what Apple had done, which was, you can get your cash, you can use your cash,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you can go to an atm, uh, pull it out.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You can do peer to peer payments.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

All good.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But you couldn't do e-commerce.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you couldn't pick or bifurcate in between, you know, your credit or your cash.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Some people just want to use their cash, you know, instead, but you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

can't do that, you know, inside of that mobile wallet experience.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we ran our cash card, and, and the cash program on a private label

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

MasterCard bin, which allows for e-commerce, to continue to happen.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So within that MasterCard, ecosystem will give, you know, our vital cash members

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

ubiquity across the payments, uh, universe to, to use their cash that they've,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

been able to, to reward themselves with.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then the card, you know, the card is great.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You can't deny the sound of that card

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

when you sit it down on a table or you've.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You put it into one of the little plastic trays to pay at a restaurant or you

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

hand it somebody and they, they grab it and their hand goes down a little bit.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

it's not as heavy as like the JP

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Morgan Palladium card, which is like probably, you know, the 10

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

pounds, the Rolls Royce of all cards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We weren't exactly going for that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But, you know, status and brands, you know, again, are one of our leading

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

charges of like, why you pick anything that you're gonna use constantly.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

What our cardholders and our future cardholders told us through multiple

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

surveys, that was, you know, I would use my card still during covid, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

um, that's not gonna stop me from using a card when, when the world returns.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we really took a lot of stock into that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then, you know, there's obviously a black card, there's a

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

silver card, there's a gold card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

all kind of represent different things to different people.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But the real, winner out of all of this thing was the rose gold card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

, I think it was 67% of our, um, uh, female college educated in the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

working, world already, and, and doing highly, highly well for themselves.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

All said, that's the one I want.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I'll not get a wallet before I would get the, the rose gold card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we, we got our, uh, we got our message loud and cleared, and we

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

narrowed it down to those four colors.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Cards still matter, dropping a heavy card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

People said, I, I want an Amex black, I want, you know, the Amex Platinum

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

or the, the sapphire of the palladium cards because I, I want to feel the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

status of having a good metal card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

They cost you exactly how they look, but they're, they're definitely

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

something that, you know, we, we said we weren't gonna go to the market

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

without it, so I'm glad we could do it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Yeah, I'm still looking for that

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

flat, black, black everything card.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Just, when you look at it, you're like, Is that even real Uhhuh?

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And you guys came pretty close, pretty close.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

You keep pretty close.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

As close as the card brand.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

was just gonna say, you get, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

it took a lot of work to even get, to be able to, gray scale out the MasterCard,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

which, you know, Apple was the only one in the, in the market that had done

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that and they had, 7 million cards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, so that there was a little bit more higher likelihood that they were

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

gonna be MasterCard, you know, world Elite status, you know, when they came through.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So that, that's another thing, you know, that we looked at.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we're not going to have, world elite status by any means being a brand new card

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

out in the market, but we're going to give all of our cardholders world elite status

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and work our way into it as a company,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

if you're gonna get the card, you're gonna care how it ma uh, care how it looks.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You're gonna always use it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We should get you the best benefits and the best reasons to have that card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We immediately out of the gate said, the look matters.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And if that's the only way we can get the look, that's what we're gonna do.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So you mentioned something just a

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

moment ago that made me think about it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

you mentioned the, the vital card in the vital cash card.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Mm.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Help me understand what is the difference between those two and,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

and how, Or is there a difference?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

There's no difference other than, in

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

your Apple wallet, you know, or your, just your Android wallet as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, Apple Cash is just your cash equivalent, but you can load it, you can

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

preload it off of, your bank account and you can pull it over, you know, because

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we're going to have such a large cash component with the vital community and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

the referring program, you know, we wanted to make the cash more accessible and

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

we wanted to make it more as just a, as equal parts important to the card holders.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The way that we pay it is all based on, the numbers of referrals that you get.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So you're gonna get four points, for your direct referral, one, one person down from

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you, and then you're gonna get two points for every one person that they refer.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then any people that they refer to, you would get a point for them as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So as that really stacks up, it can move quickly.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mm-hmm.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and, and they just have to spend in order to, to allow you to make money.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, You get one and a half percent, for everything that you spend.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Then you get, 1% of what the whole vital community spend is for that month,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and it starts to break out by their top reward or, or top refers you, you know.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So the more they get, the more they spend, they're gonna get those residual

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

checks for all of those community members that they've brought in, for

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

the life of the program, as long as there's spend on everybody's card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So we just thought of it, we looked at it and we said, it's such a big, valuable

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

basis to the card and it's true money, it's true cash, and we're gonna allow

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

people to, donate it and, and share it and do all of these other things.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, um, we need to make it accessible.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Now you got me really curious.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So does that mean that my rewards that I get, let's say the cash base

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

rewards, do they go on to the .Do I have a, a vital card that then

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

the rewards go into the cash card?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

there's no rewards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It's all equals in cash.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So your rewards are cash rewards.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Okay.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Okay.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So my cash, I'm, I'm saying it wrong.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

My cash rewards.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Your vital cash reward.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Yes.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So your vital cash, you know, you can access it in all ways.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, let's just take the card, not present opportunity where that is

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

different, um, than, let's say again, the, you know, the Apple cash is, you

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

can load it still where it's connected to a bank account and you can preload

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

it and then peer to peer pay it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, that's one of the really great benefits from the Apple card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, so all taking in all that same functionality, having the ability to, to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

use Zelle, PayPal, Venmo off of your cash.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Still very, very important to the, to the digital natives

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and the Gen Zs and millennials.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, but that e-com piece was the big missing piece, so

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you can use your vital cash.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, you, you know, and because it's on a MasterCard private label bin as

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

well through our sponsor bank, then you can actually do it with your,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

um, custom pan that you're gonna have, which is your card number.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, which is probably an important thing to note.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, your card number doesn't show up on your card.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You, you know, everything in vital is built into your wallet.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So you've got your own, um, custom pan that you're gonna be issued for

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

MasterCard, but you can change your card number every day if you wanted to.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, it's a virtual card, so the, if the number is ever

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

compromised, you have controls of all of those securities within your app.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You'll be able to change the number.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But that pan number, you know, whether it's a unique nine digit pan for, a,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

private label card or you know, you're gonna have a 16 digit pan like every other

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

card, you are going to have one that's unique to you from a vital standpoint,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and that's what you'll be able to use on all of these different channels.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Wow.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So that really does really allow people to have full control and, and feel secure.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

When, when maybe something doesn't look right or maybe they just, they

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

don't want to expose themselves in the digital environment.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Mm-hmm.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

, Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

really control that.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And it, you know, great partners help.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, we have, uh, card works that we work with, we work with Fiserv and,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and as their partners, um, as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And then obviously, you know, I said to evolve, you know, as a great digital

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

first bank as well, and, and kind of a, a disruptive force with a lot of

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

different things that are in there that we just wanted to make sure that our

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

partners, you know, gave, uh, as much input into everything that we were doing.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

We asked them to, you know, let us go and take in the things that you want to

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

see how they work, we'll, we'll build it into the cart and get adoption.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, we think that, you know, that's all, uh, fair based

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

on the fact that they helped us get to the point that we're at now.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, you know, I think a lot of the things that we use again, Plaid, Experian, all

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

of these great partners that we've had along the way that they will help us

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

because I think they realize the same thing that we do, which is we're onto

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

something, you know, we're gonna get a lot of card holders in a lot of spaces

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that other people want to get them.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And, you know, we look at this and say, it's just the first product, you know,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

it's not the only product we're gonna have, but this was the entry point and,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

and it's gonna move on to a lot of things.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I'm really excited to see the social

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

sharing and, and people who already have existing communities, um, that, that are

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

already built, are up around them, them getting those folks involved and really

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

just leveraging that, that social dynamic dynamicism of, of that relationships

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

that have already been built out.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

One cool thing that's happened just

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

recently in the last 45 days is, you know, um, I, I'm not necessarily a,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

a huge race watcher, but you know, I know NASCAR and I know how much,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, following and demand.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

It has.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, there's a young driver, Chandler Smith, he's 19 years old.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

He's like the LeBron James of of nascar.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, and he had heard about us through, you know, uh, another, um, channel.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, my, my other company that I have, um, through mutual

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

clients, we had talked about it.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Um, he's 19.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

He loves it and understands this whole social world.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

He has a ton of followers.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

He heard about the card and he heard about the program and he said, I

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

wanna, I wanna have that on the car.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So he, you know, unbeknownst to us, our partners came back and worked out

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

something, you know, Got some open real estate, which is very expensive

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

to do on a, on the hood of his car.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, we're super excited to have him.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

But, you know, to your point, I think it's gonna kind of transcend,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

you know, the whole, um, kind of social influencing model.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

There's lots of people that have signed up, you know, that want to build it out

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

into kind of their, um, curator, you know, community and, you know, of these

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

populations of the Gen Zs and millennials.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Over 50% of it is doing some type of content creation every day.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And that's really, you know, what we're trying to kind of speak to.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Right.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, you should be, like I said, um, kind of ubiquitous

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

anywhere that you want to go.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You can take, you know, your connectivity with you, you should be able to take your

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

cash with you and, and use that as well.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So, you know, we think that that's, Where we're resonating with, and that's

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

where we're gonna continue to go.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Well, I know you and I could sit

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

here and talk about this for days,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

payment nerds, man

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

. is there anything like key that

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that everybody, everybody knows?

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

I think it's three things.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You focused and you talked about at the beginning like there are the

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

overlooked and kind of the underserved in all parts of financial services.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Right.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And that's kind of really important to us.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

See, you know, you heard our mission statement, we want to be as all

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

inclusive as possible, whether that's access to the financial system, whether

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

that's being able to, to share the good with, with others that may not

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

know about it, and that we can tell them, um, you know, we have secured

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

cards, we have, nobody can not get a vital card if they don't want one.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

If they don't get approved, they're gonna get a secured card

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

option where we can put cash in.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

And after 12 months of consecutive payments, everybody's gonna graduate.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

So,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Oh, wow.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

You know, there's.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

The community will be as big as it wants to be, and nobody's gonna

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

get denied from having access to the card if they want the card.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

That is fantastic.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I didn't, didn't realize that you were going to, As they build that

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

out and they show their positive history, get them to that point

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

of, of having that true card Yep.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And, and graduate them up.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

That is fantastic.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And that, that's gonna be a big, big piece.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I really, I believe it's gonna be a really, really big piece of this.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

what I'm going to do, um, is I'll put in the show notes a link for

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

you to sign up for your vital card.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And if you have questions for Adam, we'll have it in the show notes again,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

also in the description, uh, ways to reach out to him and the team over at

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Vital Card, uh, to learn more about it.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

But like I said, we'll have some links in there for you guys to just go ahead and

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

hop on and get signed up and everything.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

So, Adam, thanks again, man.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I appreciate,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

appreciate it, man.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

We've had some, some interesting noises.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

Airplanes, cars,

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

nature, nature,

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

nature.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Yeah.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

All that stuff going on.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

I appreciate you allowing me, uh, to, to this outside here.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Pleasure, man.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Pleasure.

Tedd Huff - Host, Fintech Confidential:

:

And uh, thanks again.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

All right.

Adam Spencer - Co-Founder & COO, Vital Card:

:

Thank you.

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About the Podcast

Fintech Confidential
Bringing you the people, Tech, and Companies that change how you pay and get paid.
Entertaining information focused on Fintech industry insights, market trends, news, and life stories from Fintech leaders, thinkers, and doers.

About your host

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Tedd Huff

20 plus year veteran of Fintech, giving merchants and SaaS businesses control over their Payments destiny, global PSP/Payment Facilitator advisor.

💎 Founder/President of Diamond D3
🇺🇸Army Veteran
🎙 ▶️ Podcasts & Youtube - The Tedd Huff Show & Fintech Confidential
🌐💵Global cross border and payments localization 🌐💵
🛒Intl eCommerce Consulting
📧 Hello@fintechconfidential.com