As per the latest card spending report of the UK, there are 36.5 Million active credit card accounts in the UK and 51.2% of these accounts have a balance that incur interest. The cost of life crisis and the 40-year-old high inflation has increased the dependency of people on credit cards. Many people find it challenging to keep track of multiple credit card bills, due dates, and payments, which can lead to missed payments, late fees and have an adverse impact on their credit score.
We at CAIRT-UK’s first reward-based credit card management app aims to be a pioneer in helping people manage their credit cards better. The word ‘CAIRT’ means ‘CARD” in Scottish. We are building a fintech application that aims to make credit card bill payments more rewarding and engaging for users. The app reward users for paying their credit card bills on time by providing them with cashback and discounts on a wide range of products and services.
Users can connect all their credit card accounts to the app and track all their bills in one place. The app then sends reminders to users before the due date of each bill, ensuring that they never miss a payment. For every bill that is paid on time, users earn rewards in the form of cashback or discounts on shopping, travel, and other services.
In addition to the rewards program, CAIRT will also provide users with personalized insights and recommendations based on their credit card usage and spending patterns. This helps users to make more informed decisions about their credit card usage and better manage their finances. The app also provides users with an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple to track their credit scores and monitor their credit reports.
CAIRT will be available to download on the App Store and Google Play for free. With its unique rewards program and personalized insights, CAIRT will be a valuable tool for anyone looking to improve their credit scores and make more informed decisions about their credit card usage.
Our solution addresses the pain points of credit card management and provides users with a fun and engaging way to improve their credit scores. Our mission is to make creditworthy behaviour more rewarding, and in the process empower users to make better financial decisions!
Bootstrapping my first start-up Reducto (A platform that helps supermarkets manage their surplus food better) straight out of graduating university was a challenging journey. Not being a homeowner and not having enough time on my visa worked against securing bank loans and I was too early for investors and couldn’t successfully get hands on any grants.
The only alternative I had was using credit cards- the two-edge sword. I started to revolve money across three different credit cards and went down a rabbit hole. My credit score took a hit and a period of distress followed. Luckily, I was able to get out of the debt trap and recover. The whole experience popped new questions in my mind.
Despite holding a finance degree, credit scores and credit reports didn’t make much sense to me. Having to use 3 different apps to manage my credit cards was a huge pain. All my credit cards didn’t have any rewards attached to it and I made every attempt to pay my bill on time to avoid a negative impact on my credit score. I wanted to explore various tools out there that could help me manage my credit cards better. I found out that almost 18 million credit accounts in the UK have no rewards attached to it. And almost all these accounts are held by people who are under the age of 40 and have less credit limit and high interest rates attached to their cards.
From the data collected I understood that there was a gap in the market. However, I wanted to speak to actual users other than me to verify my insight. I started my research with my colleagues at work: how many credit cards they owned, how they managed their payments, more on the experience of managing multiple apps to keep track of spending and how much sense the statements and credit scores made to them.
Thanks to discovering ‘The Mom Test’ and learning from the mistakes of Reducto, I got good at understanding the user journey without bringing in my founder bias.
The research was the beginning of discovering CAIRT. A quest to find a user-friendly tool that helped me manage my credit cards resulted in the creation of CAIRT. We are at an early stage of business now and are currently looking to validate our hypothesis by building the waitlist of user signups. The company is part of the Edinburgh Business School Incubator and runs its operations there.
We are expanding our team slowly and are getting positive results with the waitlist. Our priority now is to build that waitlist, build the MVP on the side and gain feedback from the early adopters. We are in the process of raising pre-seed to facilitate achieving these milestones.
Founder & CEO
Benley Dcruz is the founder and CEO of CAIRT. Prior to founding CAIRT he worked on his start-up-Reducto which focused on solving the problem of surplus food at supermarkets in the UK.
In 2015, at the age of 16, he discovered his passion for entrepreneurship when he got the rare opportunity of being part of the Inter-school Business Challenge held by Heriot-Watt University (Dubai Campus). In 2021, he was awarded the degree of Master of Science in International Business Management with Distinction by the same Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh Campus) where CAIRT is currently incubated.
Over the years he has worked at different start-ups before venturing out on his own. His first job was for GROON-Groceries online a Dubai based start-up where he helped in getting early grocers onboard the platform. He worked as a Marketing specialist for Better Nutritional science based in Edinburgh and helped them land a deal with StudentBeans. And prior to starting Reducto he was helping Edinburgh based IntelliDigest Ltd with their marketing efforts. His passion, willingness to learn combined with strong resilience and the ability to take calculated risks makes him unique in the entrepreneurial world.
