Coverd is a relatively new fintech that has raised $7.8 million. The Coverd credit card is currently in a closed beta and is offering up to 100x back on purchases. Card basics:
- No annual fee
- Secured/collateral backed card. For example if you deposit $500 your credit limit is $500
- Rewards that change by the hour or minute
Boosted Rates
The unique feature seems to be the rewards earning rate. They offer something called a rewards matrix that changes hourly. Each UTC hour has it’s own rates and is based on when a purchase is authorized, not when the purchase settles. For example below is the earning rate for a random hour:
You only earn the boosted rate on your first purchase on that category within the hour, all additional purchases will earn 0.5x.
Surge Earning/Windows
In addition to the above, they also have surge earning windows each hour that only last for a few minutes. For example:
Earnings Cap
Your monthly limit (the “Rewards Cap”) is set by your own spending — in any one statement period you can’t earn more than 100 Coverd Points for each dollar of Qualifying Purchases on your prior statement, less any Coverd Points you earned during that statement. For your first month, before there’s a prior statement to measure, we start you at 50,000 Coverd Points, and the cap never drops below that 50,000-point floor in any later period
Our Verdict
Looks like most people would have a 50,000 point cap each month, that’s only $500 in spend if you do exclusively 100x offers. Personally I can see two major issues with this program:
- It’s not sustainable, you’d be relying on people making 0.5x purchases and I think most cardholders would be aggressively min/maxing
- Nightmare to administer. Can only imagine the amount of complaints regarding things not authorizing properly during the 3 minute surge windows.
I’d be surprise if this exits out of closed beta in this form.
