David Metz, Founder and CEO of Prizeout, on blending adtech and fintech for credit unions

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David Metz, Founder and CEO of Prizeout
David Metz, Founder and CEO of Prizeout

There is a shift that is beginning to happen in financial services: using purchase history to provide more personalized offers from merchants. There is no richer data for advertisers than knowing how we actually spend our money. This is one of the reasons behind the huge growth of BNPL but today, there are some credit unions that are on the cutting edge of this trend.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is David Metz, the CEO and Founder or Prizeout. His company started in the gaming space as a way to give people bonuses for cashing out their money. But today, he is focused on financial services, particularly credit unions, where there are a number of use cases that is helping put real money back in people’s pockets. This is a completely new application of ad tech for fintech but one that I see growing fast.

In this podcast you will learn:

  • The unusual founding story of Prizeout.
  • How a potential bank acquisition led to their movement from gaming to fintech.
  • How they are blending adtech and fintech.
  • Why they decided to focus on credit unions.
  • How JPMorgan has validated their data science thesis.
  • The challenge of building a credit union or bank loyalty program.
  • How their digital gift card program works.
  • How sophisticated their technology is behind the scenes.
  • Why they created a CUSO and how it has helped Prizeout.
  • How they have expanded their cash back program with Cash Back Plus.
  • The advantage that credit unions have in motivating their members to take action.
  • How they are working with ZayZoon to supercharge earned wage access.
  • How their expansion from gaming to financial services has helped with their purpose.
  • David’s vision for the future of Prizeout.

Read a transcription of our conversation below.

FINTECH ONE-ON-ONE PODCAST NO. 490 – DAVID METZ

Peter Renton  00:01

Welcome to the Fintech One-on-One podcast. This is Peter Renton, co-founder of Fintech Nexus and now the CEO of the fintech consulting company Renton & Co. I’ve been doing this show since 2013, which makes this the longest running one-on-one interview show in all of fintech. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Now let’s get on with the show.

Peter Renton  00:19

On to the show, I’m delighted to welcome David Metz. He is the CEO and Founder of Prizeout. Now Prizeout, you may not have heard of, but they’re a really interesting company. They are all about ad tech. Now, you may not expect cutting edge ad tech combined with fintech to be happening in the credit union space. But let me tell you, it is and you will find out about that in this interview. So David and his company have really honed in on credit unions as their core target market. And what they’re doing is they’re providing cashback basically. You want to get a gift card to Home Depot in the office for your credit union, you can actually get cash back into your credit union checking account, when you get one of those gift cards. There’s a few other use cases which we get into. It’s super interesting. melding ad tech with fintech is, I think, a massive opportunity that has really barely begun. It was a fascinating discussion. Hope you enjoy the show.

Peter Renton  00:28

Welcome to the podcast, David. Thanks. Great to be here. Great to have you. So let’s get started by giving the listeners a little bit of background about yourself. This doesn’t seem to be your first rodeo. But you have a different background from most CEOs that I interview, and, so why don’t you tell us some of the highlights of your career today?

David Metz  01:50

Well, number one, I think I fancy myself more of an entrepreneur than I am a CEO. You know, I’ve learned by doing right, like don’t have an MBA, I don’t have a bachelor’s in business or anything like that, right. So all of my learnings have been by just jumping in. When I first started my career, I worked on Wall Street for 10 years. And then I started my first startup. And that was a success. And then I had various startups after that. And kind of once, once you kind of get into the game of entrepreneurialism and startups, it’s really hard to go back kind of working for them. And so I never wanted someone else to turn determine my future. Right? You know, I want to be the person whether I fail or succeed. It’s, it’s on my own terms. So that’s why kind of entrepreneurialism has always appealed to me. And every startup that I’ve had, has kind of really led to the next one, whether it was unorthodox or not, you know, the way that Prizeout was born came out of another startup that I had that was completely different, what we’re doing, but some of the problems that I was solving at that old startup is kind of how I discovered Prizeout. So a lot of times, it’s something totally different. That kind of creates that eureka moment, like, oh, this is a problem that I’m solving, you know, we could potentially build a company around that that solution.

Peter Renton  03:15

Well, let’s talk about that then. So what was the problem that you saw that that needed solving that led to the founding of Prizeout?

David Metz  03:24

So I used to have a trivia app called FleetWit, the premise was pretty simple. You could challenge a friend or a stranger in various trivia categories. So I could say, Hey, Peter, I know more than you on premier soccer, right? And you’re like, no way, David. So we both would answer five questions. And whoever answered the most accurately, and fastest would win, let’s say we both bet $5, one of us would walk away the winner. And I needed a way for people to withdraw their winnings. Great. Peter wins. Now he’s got $10, he’s got to withdraw that money. So I was trying to integrate PayPal, but it was it was taking a while. So I started offering people the option to withdraw their money via digital gift cards. And they really liked it. So I was like, that’s, that’s cool. I’m solving a problem. But on the other side, I was acquiring customers via Facebook, spending a ton of money, acquiring customers. And then over time, it really started to irk me that I’m spending all this money on Facebook, to try to get consumers to try my product. But every time someone withdrew their winnings to a gift card brand, whether it’s Nike or Olive Garden or Lululemon, or whatever it might be, those brands were basically acquiring a customer because the customer is going to buy the gift card and then obviously use the gift card in the store therefore becoming a customer. So I was like, it’s essentially the same thing that I’m paying Facebook for, but potentially way more efficient. So then I actually reached out to some of the brands and I said hey, would you actually pay to be a withdrawal option. And they said, well, if you get us new customers or lapsed customers, we will pay a lot of money. So I was like, whoa, this could be potentially big. So I went to my board, I said, don’t kill me, we’re going from trivia to ad tech. And they’re, they’re like, all right, we support you. And that was five years ago. And it’s kind of been a rocket ship ever since.

Peter Renton  05:22

I understand the premise. You know, you instead of withdrawing $10, or $100, you draw withdraw, like $12 or $120, right? And you’re getting the benefit. And then the Nike or Lululemon are getting a new customer. That’s pretty clear. I know, you’ve been focused on credit unions, what’s the seems like not a logical next move.

David Metz  05:43

Our path is rarely a straight line. Right. It’s a lot of zigs and zags. So from from the FleetWit days, you know, we we launched with a lot of gaming companies as a withdrawal option, right? So you win money, you can work, withdraw to gift cards, instead of withdrawing $100, you might be able to withdraw $105 to Amazon, or $110, to Nike, or whatever it might be, right? Because we are partnering with a ton of merchants. And we were basically providing acquisition for the merchants, the merchants would say, hey, if you can get me a 20 to 35 year old male that lives in New York, we’re willing to pay this price, we give a portion of that to the consumer, so they’re getting more money for their withdrawals, we would then get a piece of that as well. So we started talking to credit unions about two years ago. And we kind of realized that this could be a really powerful way to get their members to earn cashback, right? So if you’re gonna go to Home Depot this afternoon, right, and you’re the type of customer that Home Depot wants, and they’re willing to pay X for that, we would give a majority of that money Home Depot is willing to pay for that customer to the customer, right? So if you’re going to spend $100 on a gift card, maybe you get $120 of value with that $20 being cash back. So you’re essentially getting paid to do purchases, you would have done anyway, through a digital gift card. So Home Depot’s getting the customer they want, that consumer is now getting cash back for a purchase they would have already done. And then obviously we sit in the middle of that taking a cut of it.

Peter Renton  07:19

Okay, so then your first foray into financial services, has it been through credit unions? Or have you have you done banks as well? Or what has been your journey there?

David Metz  07:31

I think what really kind of sparked it. About three years ago, we had a major financial institution approached us about being acquired, right? Can we can we purchase you? And before that we were predominantly in gaming and a few other industries. And we had never thought like, why would you be interested in acquiring us, right? And this big financial institution says, you know, we have lots of customers, we have lots of businesses that bank with us what, but they don’t talk to each other. We don’t do anything with us. With your technology, if we could start offering our customers the ability to get bonus value on all their purchasing by leveraging the businesses that we already have, that can be really, really powerful. So it was kind of by accident by them approaching us and looking at our technology in a way that could benefit them. After, you know, we ended up not doing the deal. But afterwards, it’s like we should really start looking into financial institutions. And we kind of you know, had a connection in the credit union industry. And I didn’t even know what a credit union was two years ago, I was still using the word customers, which is a no no.

Peter Renton  08:39

Oh, no.

David Metz  08:40

You got to use the word member. Right? So it took me months to break that habit. But since we started working with them, it’s honestly been been a pleasure. I didn’t realize how important they were to kind of the ecosystem of this country, right? They are nonprofit. And they really, really do care about their members, which has been really refreshing to see.

Peter Renton  09:01

So yeah, well, let’s take a step back for a second and just talk about loyalty. Because I feel like in fintech and in banking and credit unions, loyalty has not been, you know, like, they might say, it’s top of mind. But what loyalty programs, what are they doing? And there’s, there’s just, there hasn’t been much I feel like it’s still, it’s a major, major challenge. And we just haven’t seen, we haven’t seen the killer app yet. For loyalty, maybe Prizeout is it. But I would like to kind of get your sense of, you know, you starting talking with with credit unions. What’s your sense of the challenges of building like a sort of a robust loyalty program from a bank or credit union perspective?

David Metz  09:45

To solve the problem you really have to understand how loyalty works, right? You know, we really specialize in cashback. But you have to understand even how cashback works, right? So I’m a jaded New Yorker. I live in New York and everything I do is credit card and points and I’m obsessed with that and cashback and everything like that. You know, my wife’s like, why didn’t you use this card at the grocery store, we got 7x versus 5x. I’m like, this is way too complicated. Like, I literally grabbed the, you know, the milk and credit card that was closest to me. But that’s a world but that is the credit world. When I started partnering with credit unions, I didn’t realize that the vast majority of the country, they don’t use credit cards, they use debit cards for all of their spend, which means is, the financial institution gets a lot less interchange. Interchange is what the merchant pays, every time when you swipe. If you swipe a credit card interchange is much higher than debit card. And typically with cashback, they take a portion of that interchange and they share it with you. Right? That’s why most credit card programs have cashback. But that’s why very few if any debit card programs can can give cash back because there’s just not enough interchange, for the bank to make money and to pass on to the consumer. So what we’ve done is that we’ve taken our ad tech technology and layered it over it, right. Because now what we have is we have the merchants competing for that spend. So when a merchant logs onto their online banking, and they click on Prizeout, and they see all of these digital gift cards, all of our merchants want them to choose their gift card, right? They want. Nike wants them to spend with them. Adidas wants them to spend with them.  Converse wants to spend with them. Allbirds want them to spend with them. Right. But ultimately, the consumer has to make a choice. And there’s a lot of factors that go into it. But a big one is like how much cash back are you going to give me? Right? You know, like, yes, I love Nike, but Adidas is giving me 15% cash back. That’s a lot of money, right? Maybe I’ll try Adidas, right. So now, before they make their spend that we’re allowing the merchants to kind of bid on that. And they’re willing to pay so much money that for the first time we can give large amounts of cash back for debit card spenders. And that’s kind of how we’ve created an even playing field between debit card users and credit card users. Because when we came into it, it’s really a two class world. Credit card users get all the rewards and debit cards get nothing. And a lot of times, the reason why they use debit cards, they’re actually doing it for the right reason, right? Because they want to get into financial trouble. They’re like, I don’t want to get into debt. I don’t want to tempt myself, right. So you know, being able to reward them for that spend has been really, really cool.

Peter Renton  12:36

Right, so maybe, could you just take us through an example maybe one of the credit unions you’re working with, just take us through the flow, like where in the credit union app? I presume this is all done on mobile? Or is it…

David Metz  12:48

 It’s both app and mobile, it lives behind their banking walls, right?

Peter Renton  12:52

So could you take us through, where it sits, how it sits and what sort of how the credit unions are using Prizeout sort of to drive loyalty.

David Metz  13:02

So how it typically would work you remember, you log on to your online banking, right. And then you’ll see an option what we call offers. And when you click on that, you’re gonna see 30 to 40 personalized digital gift cards. And what I mean by that is because we integrate both with the core and the online banking, we’re analyzing transaction histories. So we’re making recommendations based on your spend, right? We know you love, Kohl’s, and we know you love Olive Garden, etc. So the moment you log on, it’s gonna be very personalized merchants, right? We know you love Italian food, we know you love sneakers, etc. So we’re showing them merchants, they can also search for any brand that they want, we have almost all of them. So when they’re looking at the merchants, each merchant will have an offer 10%, 3%, 15%, right. And what that means that’s the cashback that they’re gonna get. So if they buy, if Nikes giving them 15%, and let’s say they buy $100 digital gift card, they’re gonna get $100 Nike digital gift card, but they’re also gonna get $15 because it’s 15% instantly put right back into their account. So essentially, they just made $15 to do a purchase they were going to do anyway, right? They wanted to buy sneakers. Nike, you know, had an offer that enticed them, and they chose Nike now to make that purchase. Right? They would have made that purchase anyway, with their debit card, right? They would have gotten nothing, right. But now, all of the sneaker companies are now trying to entice them to choose them to make that purchase. Right. So that’s how the whole ecosystem happens for for the member.

Peter Renton  14:46

How sophisticated is the tech behind this? I’m just wondering if you’ve got a like a 19-year-old college student who’s a member of a credit union, versus maybe a 40-year-old professional who’s earning six figures. Will your merchants pay more for the 40-year-old than they will for the 19-year-old? Or is it just is it across the board?

David Metz  15:07

It’s very sophisticated. The technology, the merchants are looking for whatever consumer they want, right? Like, and many merchants have very different reasons. Right? So and we do, we partner with a lot of college credit unions. The spending behavior is very different. It’s all DoorDash, Uber, right? Where, you know, the older may be like Kroger and Walmart, right? So depending on the demographics, geographically, just their spending in general, it’s not necessarily based on age or anything like that, but really where they are, and where they are in their kind of financial behavior.

Peter Renton  15:46

Would Nike or Walmart be willing to pay more for a certain demographic than another? Or is it always going to be the same?

David Metz  15:53

It’s that demographic, it’s more like, new users, right? So let’s say they’re Nike. And a lot of times we’ll share data with our merchants, the merchants will tell us who their user base is, right? So if you’re a merchant, and you say, hey, Prizeout, can you get us a new user? We say, sure, but we don’t know who your users are, right? So the moment that we share that information, and one of, a person comes, you know, who likes sneakers, and it’s a sneaker company, and we realize that that is a new user, that merchant will oftentimes pay a lot of money in terms of cashback in order to get them to try their product, right? Or it may be a lapsed user, right? It may be hey, you know, they haven’t shopped with us in nine months, right? How do we get them back? Offer them more cash back, you know, the, you know, ultimately, it’s the customer’s decision. But giving them that bonus is a pretty big incentivizer. What we’ve essentially done is, we’re essentially Facebook and Google. But instead of all that money going to Facebook and Google, we take the majority of what we call the CAC, what they’re willing to pay for that customer, and we give it back to the member. We believe that’s a better way to get somebody to try your product than have a clever Instagram ad or something like that, right?

Peter Renton  17:10

Yep. Yep, totally get it

David Metz  17:11

Kind of democratize ad tech in that sense.

Peter Renton  17:14

I want to ask about a development from last year, you said you’d never heard of a credit union before. And then it seems like last year, you created a CUSO, a credit union service organization. And that’s not a trivial exercise. So tell us what was the thinking behind there?

David Metz  17:30

Yeah, so obviously, if I didn’t know much about credit unions, I did not know what a CUSO was. It’s essentially a credit union term for an SPV. Right? So when we started partnering with them, and they started to see the power of our technology, they were like, we’d love to, you know, create a deeper partnership, right? Can we can we invest, right? So they created a CUSO, and about 20 credit unions invested in that CUSO. So and then that CUSO invested in Prizeout. So obviously, we’re partnered with them, but they also sit on our board, and they’re on our cap table. So it’s a pretty deep relationship. And it’s allowed us to scale so quickly. You know, every other industry that we were in, oftentimes, when we sit down, and we partner with them, I can’t tell you how many times they’re like, hey, if I give you a million bucks, can we be the only person in our industry that uses you as a differentiator, but with credit unions, when we sit down with them, like, oh, you know, who’d love this, my friend, the CEO, in the credit union next door would love this, right? I’m gonna make a phone call and introduce yourselves. It’s such a collaborative industry, I’ve never experienced anything like that. And it’s really allowed us to scale really, really quickly.

Peter Renton  18:43

So when I was doing research for this interview, I came across a lot of articles talking about data personalization and what is sort of underutilized data, what’s the most useful data? Can you just tell us a little bit about what, particularly with the credit union lens, like what are the what are the useful data points that that you think should be focused on?

David Metz  19:05

It’s topical, obviously, I’m sure you’re aware of JP Morgan announcing that they’re going to start monetizing transaction data, then it’s kind of been a snowball effect. PayPal went after them. And I think that’s obviously the the future. I always joke that banks think they’re in the savings and loans business, but they have the best and the purest form of data that exists, right? You could like a page, that doesn’t really tell you much right? Where you spend your money is ultimately what matters most right? And obviously, financial institutions have that data. The credit unions, again, because they’re nonprofit, and they’re member owned, you know, they’re always trying to create the best experiences possible for them. Right. And then one of the ways to do that is to really understand your member. What are your purchases? What are your habits, right? Because if you know, members love, I don’t know, Shake Shack or something. I’m in New York so Shake Shack’s big, like, how can you create a situation where you’re getting them more value for their purchases, right? So really understanding them. And understanding that data is really the first step, and delivering a personalized experience, and then creating a situation like we have where you can actually put money back into their pockets.

Peter Renton  20:21

Can you talk about Cash Back Plus? What is it and tell us a little bit about its development?

David Metz  20:27

Yeah, Cash Back Plus plus really represents the whole loyalty ecosystem of the credit unions and financial institutions. So we started with what I mentioned, offers, which is the ability for members to buy digital gift cards and get that cash back. But we’ve now started to run their entire rewards program, both credit card, and also creating opportunities to additionally reward and loyalty for credit unions. Because of the data, we can do things like how do you get your members to enroll in e-statements? If that’s a business goal, right? And you want your members to do that, how do you get that? That should be rewarded, right? If you want somebody to do an action, you should reward them, right. So we’ve created the ability for credit unions to reward for any business goal that they want, set up direct deposit, whatever, you know, whatever you can think of put our card in your mobile wallet, pay your subscriptions with us, right, whatever you can think of, because that data exists, right? Most need to get that data, right? And then you need to go out to your members and say, hey, we would like you to do this, because we think it’s it’s best for our business goal. To do it, we’re willing to reward you in the form of cashback, each action has a different reward, right? But now, it’s a whole entire ecosystem, where they can reward for any action that they want. So that is the, that is the whole ecosystem of Cash Back Plus

Peter Renton  21:57

So it’s nothing to do with gift cards.

David Metz  21:59

Now that’s actually so where the gift cards are merchant funded, right? The reward program where you can create an action is actually Credit Union funded, you know, because they’re the ones where merchants are trying to get you to spend with them. That’s the action they want to incentivize. The creditors are now able to say, members, we want you to do this action, and therefore we’ll fund that whatever that amount might be for that action.

Peter Renton  22:24

How’s the adoption been for that? Because I imagine that’s, it’s one thing to have a whole bunch of offers on your website to give the gift cards. It’s a much deeper integration, what you’re talking about there. So how has adoption been for Cash Back Plus?

David Metz  22:38

Yeah, so we just started rolling out with employees. But adoption has been significant, it’s really never, it’s never existed before. Right? So that number is that level of education? Right? Like, the good thing is that it’s from their credit union. So that has that inherent trust, right? Everyone’s skeptical. It’s like, whoa, so if I do this, I get $10? Normally, people are like what’s the catch? Right? But because the credit unions have built that trust throughout the years, adoption is a lot quicker, right? So when they’re saying I’ll give you $5, if you pay your Netflix subscription with us, right? The member may be paying it with another financial institution. But obviously, the credit union wants that spend to exist in their ecosystem, so they’re willing to reward that. So now, it’s just, again, most of these actions, you know, were done previously through clever marketing campaigns or things like that. But now, it all rolls up to one central rewards program. So it’s been it’s been pretty powerful thus far.

Peter Renton  23:40

I imagine it’s a data scientists dream, right? Where you can kind of see where all the spend is, and then see where you can, what your business goals are, and you can really incent them in a much more accurate way than say, oh here’s $10 to open up a new account.

David Metz  23:55

It’s wild, right? Because you may be a financial institution. And a lot of people when you get your first job is when you set up your bank account, right?

David Metz  23:57

And usually, it’s kind of like, this is where my parents bank, you know, nothing about five banks, or it’s the bank that’s in your community, right? That’s usually your kind of first foray into banking, right? And then what typically happens is you usually don’t change that, right? Your pay keeps going into that financial institution. But as you get older, and you understand, you start understanding points and loyalty and rewards, and you’re like, where am I going to get the best bang for my spend? Right? So while, and I’ve heard community banks and credit unions say this, it’s like, we don’t want to be a paycheck motel. Right? We don’t want the paycheck to sit with us, but to spend going with Cap One or AMEX or somebody else, right? We want the spend, we want obviously, the paychecks coming with us, but we want them to spend with us as well. As you alluded before in order to do that, you have to reward them. You have to create a compelling reason for them to do that, right? And the first, the first step is understanding that data and a lot of these financial institutions, anywhere from 25% to 35%, of all of their spend is going with other financial institutions, right?

Peter Renton  23:57

Mmmhmm.

Peter Renton  23:57

Right.

David Metz  24:08

Money’s leaving the ecosystem, right? So step one is, okay, how do we get that back? Right? How do we incentivize that to bring them back? Even though their paychecks coming with us, we want them to spend with us as well. So that’s kind of step one of understanding that data. But what’s the point of understanding the data if you can’t action on that? Okay, we know it. Now, how do we solve it right? How do we get them to spend with us? And that’s where we come in, not only are we seeing that data, we’re creating a products to incentivize your members to spend with you as well clawing back a lot of that money that you’re losing to other financial institutions.

Peter Renton  25:53

So I’m a big fan of earned wage access as a product. And I also was curious, when I read about your partnership with ZayZoon, I mean, they’re not a huge player, but they’re, you know, I’m curious about the earned wage access piece here. I mean, maybe explain what it is, because I wasn’t quite sure myself. So what are you doing there?

David Metz  26:13

It’s the same concept, right? So if you, I don’t know, if you’re getting paid on Friday, and today’s Wednesday, and you know the concept, you need to get your money early, because let’s say you got a flat tire, right? And you just don’t have the money. And you need to replace your tire. So you can go to work tomorrow, right? So earned wage access allows you to get your pay early, right? So when you get that money, in ZayZoon’s case, which they are phenomenal, and they work with a ton of small businesses, we’re huge fans of them here at Prizeout, you can get your money in two ways. You can get it in the form of cash, or you can get it in the form of a gift card with a bonus value. Right? So in that example, that I just used, you got a flat tire, why don’t you get the money that ZayZoon is giving you early to buy a Firestone gift card that you’re getting 20%, right? Oftentimes, the bonus you’re getting is more than the fees you’re paying to get your money early. So it’s really a win-win, you’re getting more money to do the action that you need, which in this case, is you need to buy a new tire, or maybe you have a leak in your roof and you need to go to Home Depot, you buy a Home Depot gift card, and you get 10% more, right? So and that tends to be a demographic that can use that extra money. So it’s really a win-win scenario.

Peter Renton  27:32

So are you still doing, I mean we’ve been talking about financial services and obviously, this is a fintech podcast. So I’m not interested in the gaming space, per se. But I’m curious, are you still doing a lot of business there? Is this is financial services a small sideline? Is it the biggest part of your business? Where are you at?

David Metz  27:49

Yeah, gaming, still a very big part of our business. But obviously, if you look at the TAM versus gaming versus financial industry, it’s night and day. So while we started in gaming, and it’s still a big part, and it’s a very profitable business for us, financial institutions, specifically credit union is where we see our future, because there’s so many great things. And to be honest, the data is much richer as well. That’s really what we’re focusing on in the next couple of years.

Peter Renton  28:18

Okay. Okay. Well, so then what’s sort of your long term vision here? Because I can see I mean, it’s an exciting concept you’ve created here. And I often think, well, loyalty is just like, I feel like there’s so much opportunity. And as you say, the TAM is monstrous. You just focus on credit unions, I mean, community banks have the same issues. So do fintechs. Everyone has the, everyone wants to acquire customers inexpensively. So I’m curious about your vision for Prizeout. Like, where are you taking this?

David Metz  28:46

Yeah, you know, when I started, as I mentioned, the beginning it was and it’s a, it’s a funny story. About three years ago, my son asked me what I do for a living, and I said, I help people get their gaming winners off site, you know, faster, and with a little bit more money. He’s like, oh, yeah, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s cool dad. And then about six months ago, he asked me the same question because they were doing something at school with what you know, what your parents do. And I said, you know, we help average people that may be struggling to put more money back in their pocket. So, you know, maybe they can buy their kids an extra Christmas present or birthday present or something. Right? And he’s like, that’s really, really cool dad, right? So like, there are a lot of people struggling right now, especially with this inflationary period. So for us to be able to, to, you know, put money back in their pocket has really given us a sense of purpose that we didn’t have before. Right, we’re actually helping people right? And we’re helping an industry that I’ve grown to have a lot of respect for, credit unions be able to do that. And that’s that’s pretty cool. Because loyalty isn’t travel points. You know, these people aren’t thinking about going to the Caribbean. They’re thinking about, you know, how are they going to buy their kids new sneakers or they need new shin guards for their soccer game and they just don’t have the money right now. Right? You know, that’s, you know, that is the majority of Americans, you know that a lot of people are struggling right now. So they’re not thinking about points or worth, or travel or hotels or anything like that. They’re just thinking about everyday expenses. Righ?. And that’s why we focus in cashback, because it’s a much more transparent thing. Points, you need to have a master’s in mathematics sometimes to figure out. But you know, cashback is very straightforward. And it’s something that you can use for whatever you need. Really, that’s, that’s the future that we see. And obviously we profit from it. But if we can simultaneously do good as well, that’s kind of where we want to spend most of our time.

Peter Renton  30:43

Okay, well, let’s leave it there, David. Fascinating discussion. I think it is important to be able to put money back into people’s pockets, particularly money that they were going to spend anyway, I think you’ve got a really interesting concept. Great to learn more about it. And thanks for coming on the show today.

David Metz  30:58

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Peter Renton  31:00

Well, I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you so much for listening. Please go ahead and give the show a review on the podcast platform of your choice and go tell your friends and colleagues about it. Anyway, on that note, I will sign off. I very much appreciate you listening, and I’ll catch you next time. Bye.