Business Ideas: “best credit card cashback” app

Todays business idea: An app for figuring out which credit card to use for which purchase. I personally have 3 different credit cards I use regularly and all of them have different benefits and disadvantages.

The problem statement

You’re about to buy some electronics for 500 CHF. Which credit card gives you the most cashback? Is it the Revolut with the 0.1% cashback within continental EU or the Viseca Surprise cashback program? Have you considered other credit card services like the best price guarantee? Too complicated and you always use the same card anyway? There should be an app for that!

The proposed solution / business idea

The idea is the “best credit card cashback” app. You provide some information about the credit cards you have (e.g. in my case Revolut Metal, Viseca Gold and Neon Free), then enter the type of purchase and it’s price and currency and the app will calculate the cashback for each card. For example during weekdays Revolut has unbeatable interbanking exchange rates on foreign currencies. Neon would be cheaper on the weekends and the Viseca Gold has a best price guarantee which is often useful for stuff like electronics and purchases in CHF. The output would basically be a ranked list of best credit card to use for this given purchase.

The potential upselling / side-effects

The following things could be added on-top of this idea:

• Monetization: Make the app suggest specific services which would be a better deal for a given purchase (e.g. “Hey with Neon you would save about 10 CHF on the currency exchange”, put a Neon affiliate link in the app and earn money from the sign-ups).
• “Best Price” Tracker: Ask for the specific product that was bought and track price comparison pages for the next 14 days to use the best price guarantee of cards like the Viseca Gold. I think may people don’t use the best price guarantee because they either forget to track it or are too lazy to fill the claim form. Bonus points: Fill the form automatically for the user.
• Insurance upselling: Maybe there are combinations where thanks to the better exchange rates with Revolut an additional travel insurance for a given trip makes sense financially.
• Geofencing: Detect if a user is in a given store (e.g. Migros / Coop) and proactively suggest the best credit card to use (e.g. Migros Cumulus card for purchases in Migros).

The risks

There are some fair concerns around the idea:

• Might raise privacy concerns regarding inputting purchase details.
• Needs to be as frictionless as possible, maximum 3-4 input fields with some prefilled based on set preferences.
• Might be somewhat complicated to cover all the obvious and hidden fees (e.g. intraday exchange spread, cost of ownership of card, weekend rates different from week days, calculation of cashback etc.).
• There are dozens of different credit card offerings in Switzerland alone.

Feedback

If you know a place, an app or company which already provides/implemented this business idea, please let me know in the comments. You like my idea and/or plan to start a company/app based on it and would like to make me participate, refine the idea, consult or own a stake? Please reach out to fondueblogger@gmail.com.