Lending startup unveils credit card for Gen Zs

MANILA, Philippines — Technology startup firm Zed Philippines Inc. has launched a Mastercard Titanium credit card with zero interest, zero foreign transaction fees and no annual charges, aiming to roll out these cards to the market within the coming months.

“As a technology company from day one, we don’t have to pay for costly overhead like physical branches or bloated headcounts for manual, back-office processes,” Steve Abraham, Zed co-founder told reporters in a briefing on Monday.

Almost 25,000 Filipinos lined up to avail themselves of the credit card since its roll-out.

Zed determines a user’s credit limit based on their current and future income instead of outdated credit scores, traditional career profiling or existing card limits.

This approach would mostly cater to young professionals with high incomes but limited credit histories.

“Our proprietary technology platform allows us to remove the pain in traditional banking, deliver powerful first-to-market features, and provide a fair and transparent cost structure where both Zed and the customer could win,” Abraham said.

The Zed card is supported by a robust and secure mobile app, which gives users a real-time list of their transactions, sets spending limits and puts in place fraud controls.

Zed is also offering unlimited virtual cards where users could generate unique credit card numbers for their purchases, reducing the worries of users in exposing the details of their primary card to merchants.

The tech firm is providing zero liability for all unauthorized transactions as well, protecting customers from paying for charges made without permission.

Danielle Cojuangco Abraham, co-founder of Zed, said Filipinos are still significantly frustrated with the “complexity, lack of transparency and bureaucracy” in financial services in the Philippines, citing that only eight percent of the population own a credit card since it’s difficult to acquire one.

“We founded Zed on the belief that young people in the Philippines and Southeast Asia deserve better financial products, better technology and ultimately better service tailored to their lifestyles and exceeding their expectations,” she said in the same briefing.

“At Zed, we’re reimagining what a credit card could be – smarter underwriting, groundbreaking features, no fees, and a revenue model that doesn’t rely on a customer’s failure to pay down their balance,” she added.

Headquartered in San Francisco and Manila, Zed is regulated by the Philippine central bank and is a principal member of Mastercard.

Investors include global fintech venture fund Valar, and other fintech operators who helped build Nubank, Square, Cred and Mercury, among others.