Imprint lands Kroger for co-branded credit card as agentic commerce threatens interchange economics

Speaker 2: Thank you. Partnering with Mongo. Cheers. Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye. Let me actually tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster for the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it. We have Daragh Murphy, the CEO and co founder of Imprint in the waiting room. Let's bring him in. How are doing? Boom. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 15: Hey, guys. How are things?

Speaker 2: We're good.

Speaker 1: So good. First time on the I

Speaker 15: appreciate you guys having me on. Last slot Yeah. Of the

Speaker 2: No. Second to last slot. We have another we have another guest in person. But anyway, introduce yourself, the company, the news. Give it to us.

Speaker 15: Yeah. So at imprint, we're building the infrastructure that lets everybody feel like a regular at their favorite brand. Mhmm. We think that starts with co branded financial payments. And so with Kroger, we're launching or relaunching their co branded credit card.

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 15: They're leaving a big bank, bank that's been around for a hundred years choosing us. It's obviously a big vote for us because they're the fourth largest merchant in The US. Yeah. And you're probably asking, like, why does somebody like Kroger choose Imprint over a Fortune 100 bank? Mhmm. There's really three reasons. One, we're not trying to steal their customer. So many banks are trying to steal their customer, sell them a mortgage or a deposit account, or they got BNPL trying to steal their customer and sell them to somebody else. Mhmm. Two, we took this $100,000,000 bet to rebuild the our tech platform for ourselves. All the banks, every credit card in your wallet, they rely on legacy infrastructure, mainframes in the Midwest. We own it so we build better product. And a lot of times now with these merchants, our partners, you know, when we first started talking to them four or five years ago, they were worried about getting disintermediated by Amazon or Instacart. Today, the conversations we have is how do we help you stay relevant when news is on the horizon, instinct is coming, and our perspective perspective of the merchants is top of wallet, you're top of mind. And so if we give you a better credit card, more rewards, fairer, then you end up being a big part of the consumer's life.

Speaker 2: Talk to me about how I should think about your business. You mentioned they they would go with a the alternative is going with a bank. Are you registered as a bank? Do you have a charter? Or are you more of a like a fintech software layer? Like, what are the economic breakdowns? We were I I wanna go further into what cobranded card economics look like, but give me the one zero one on the category.

Speaker 15: Yeah. So we offer the brand the exact same thing that a bank would. In fact, Shell recently left Citi for us. Craig and Barra left a big bank for us last year. Yeah. Our proposition is you get the same as you would get from the bank plus a much better technology, product, etcetera.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 15: The way it works is we're not a bank. We work with partner banks.

Speaker 1: Okay. You

Speaker 15: know, Affirm, Clarin, everybody else does the same thing.

Speaker 5: Sure.

Speaker 15: And the way the economics work is we help the buy or the brand fund some of the rewards.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Speaker 15: Richer rewards matter for customers. Right? Everybody loves their rewards credit card.

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 15: If we work with a brand that owns a big share of your wallet, why wouldn't you wanna use the credit card?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 15: And the way and then we have a profit share with the bank off the bottom.

Speaker 2: Got it. Right? So I imagine Yeah. Imagine, like, Visa and Mastercard, like, the rails are still taking, you know, 1%, 2% of the transaction fee, but there's still maybe 1% that's floating around there that can be given back as a reward or kept. How close am I on the actual numbers? How does it split down?

Speaker 6: Pretty far off.

Speaker 7: Okay.

Speaker 15: So the rails take, like, 15 or 16 basis points.

Speaker 2: Oh, it's really low.

Speaker 15: Both sides. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Interesting. And

Speaker 15: then the the name on the card, imprint, Chase, whomever, we get interchange of about a buck 80 2%.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 15: And then we give almost all of that back to the brands give the consumer better rewards.

Speaker 2: Okay. So we were debating this in the context of Instinct, the personal AI agent. And we were sort of asking ourselves like why hasn't an AI company launched a co branded credit card with a company like you and then use that as a monetization strategy? Maybe they can give it back in tokens or do some sort of reward but basically Yeah.

Speaker 1: Big thing is like you can't Start getting some

Speaker 2: transaction fees.

Speaker 1: Want to capture transaction fees quickly Yeah. Going out and doing partnerships, you know, you can do the big partnerships with like a Shopify. Yeah. There's a lot of other things that you buy online. There's a lot of like I I think about the number of local service providers I've found with ChatGPT that ChatGPT gets no benefit from and it's great for the service provider. And there might

Speaker 2: not be a referral program. The

Speaker 1: beauty the beauty of a card is that is that the the service provider is used to paying a transaction fee Yep. And it doesn't really feel like they're paying No. Anyone when they do it because payment, you know, transaction fees are normal. So feels like it it also makes sense in the sense of, like, linking the payment method to the account, then you're not dealing with, like, oh, I'm authorizing this agent to use credentials stored somewhere else. Like, feels like there's some potentially security

Speaker 2: Yeah. Do see it going?

Speaker 15: Yeah. All I can say on that specific point is watch this space.

Speaker 5: Okay. But

Speaker 15: if you think about

Speaker 6: it more broadly, right, like,

Speaker 1: everybody

Speaker 15: hates, everybody is that a good that's not the sales guy.

Speaker 1: No. No.

Speaker 2: No. No. That's like it's getting real. It's like a boat horn, like, you

Speaker 15: know Amazing.

Speaker 1: Action movie. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 15: Amazing. Look. I do I think if you if you think about the space generally,

Speaker 2: like Yeah.

Speaker 15: Everybody hates interchange. Everybody hates paying Visa and Mastercard. Yeah. I think there will be credit cards, but I think the really interesting question is, like, what's one step beyond that? Sure. And so a lot of what we've been investing in is, like, letting merchants, letting brands accept your bank account as a payment. Sure. Because that's, like, basis points on the dollar. Yep. In a world of agents, you can optimize that. The hard thing today is it's like a shitty it's a bad sorry. I'm Irish.

Speaker 5: It comes out sometimes. It's a

Speaker 15: bad user experience to have to link your bank account. Yeah. If you can be, like, Muse or Instinct, here's my bank account details. Yeah. I trust you to to link them up correctly.

Speaker 2: When Instinct get rid

Speaker 15: of that friction. Right?

Speaker 2: Like,

Speaker 15: crypto was a fugazi year. Like, this is actually the first time I think interchange is in danger. Yeah. And it's 2% of American commerce goes across these rails. So it's a huge amount of value.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No. I mean, was pushing for this for years with the with the credit card push trying to get to ACH with with various customers, and it was a really long slog. The Apple Pay ecosystem sort of won a lot of things, but yeah, you can see that it it it the game is once once again a foot with with the agentic era.

Speaker 15: And Stripe is pushing this with Muse. Right? Like, you have the Stripe link experience. I think, know, you use Uber today. The last time I used it, it prompted me to use Stripe link instead of using a credit card. Right? And so, yeah, it's actually very bearish, think, for those, like, you know, Mastercard, Alemix is a different business. But longer term, I think it's gonna be great for merchants and and consumers.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Jordan, anything else?

Speaker 1: Great to finally have you on. I remember when you launched I I or maybe not launched, but I remember back in 2021, I was building in fintech too, and maybe it was around that I saw. But when I saw the business launch, it made it made a lot of sense. So it's great to hear all the progress. And it's great to have an Irish it's great to have an Irish accent on the show. You know? You don't have enough of them.

Speaker 15: Yeah. Sorry for the swearing.

Speaker 1: No. No.