The average U.S. consumer juggles more than four cards in their wallet, and tapping existing credit appropriately is a key factor in building a healthy credit score. That challenge gave entrepreneur Sam Miller the idea for the finance tool Kasheesh.
Using machine learning and data-aggregation from Plaid, Miller developed an engine enabling shoppers to pay for a single item with a virtual credit card that cobbles funds together from various credit, debit and gift cards.
"We saw a gap where consumers struggled to measure all their available funds from credit, debit, gift cards and find a way to pay without putting their credit score at risk," said Miller, CEO of the firm he launched in 2021. Kasheesh began piloting the service last year.
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"I feel like buy now, pay later loans tend to drive instant-gratification purchases for people who don't really know how they're going to pay those installments, whereas we're encouraging responsible gratification by giving people real-time calculations of the best way to manage their credit lines," Miller said.
A consumer who has enrolled their payment cards with Kasheesh can click on their account when shopping online or through a mobile device to see their finance options for any given purchase through a dashboard. Kasheesh's machine learning powered-recommendation engine suggests the best combination of cards to use, often splitting payments between two cards. It also advises shoppers when to postpone certain purchases.
"Kasheesh will suggest a user postpone a purchase until an upcoming payday or future date, based on their cash flow," Miller said, noting that Kasheesh also blocks consumers from making transactions that will cause them to incur a bank overdraft fee.
Kasheesh relies on Plaid's Liabilities API, which allows companies to access detailed data for participating consumers' student loans, mortgages, credit cards and other account balances and payments. Participants must register the user name and password of each card they enroll in Kasheesh, where they are displayed within a dashboard.
Users may tap up to five different credit, debit or gift cards for any single purchase, but Kasheesh enables users to store up to 20 different cards in its digital wallets, which can be rotated at any time for purchases.
Since launching early last year, Kasheesh has attracted thousands of users mostly through word of mouth, and several thousand more consumers are on the waiting list, Miller said.
Kasheesh has processed more than $40 million in purchases in its first 18 months and is on track to process at least $150 million by the end of this year, with more than half of first-time users coming back for at least one more transaction, he said.
Initially available only for online purchases, Kasheesh in April added an in-store shopping option, which is rapidly catching on among users, Miller said. To make an in-store payment, the consumer plugs the amount into the Kasheesh app and a virtual card is displayed for the clerk.
Kasheesh uses Stripe to connect to merchants, but the company also plans to expand its reach to merchants through an integration with a card network. Currently the firm is in discussions with Visa to implement
In recent years digital technology has caused an explosion of innovation in point-of-sale payments, and the jury is still out on the sustainability of many new models, said Brian Riley, director of credit advisory services at co-head of payments at Javelin Strategy & Research.
"Kasheesh will be interesting to watch, to the extent that it delivers on security and consumer protection," Riley said, noting that new consumer finance products that cut against "unbridled lending" are a plus in an environment where consumers are stressed by rising inflation and interest rates.
Miller said Kasheesh's next move will be adding the capability for groups of Kasheesh users to join forces with all their available cards to make purchases.
"A group of people could use Kasheesh to fund a trip, using all their available cards in a responsible way, which we think will have increasing appeal for people watching their budgets in this economic environment," Miller said.
