Steve Abraham

Building Zed. Founder @SympleHQ (acquired). YC alum. Former @BoxHQ, @generalatlantic & @MorganStanley. @StanfordFball fanatic. I only endorse @levie's tweets.

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

Hotels, car rentals, flights — split all your shared expenses by sending or requesting payments with other friends on Zed. Everyone pays their share using their credit.

Pay friends now. Pay Zed on your due date.

Join the waitlist: https://t.co/kUqPh2NQSO
#CreditCardPH

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

Pay friends now. Pay Zed later. ⚡

Send and request payments with other Zed users — straight from your credit. Whatever you send goes toward your monthly statement, so you only pay on your due date.

Get your friends on Zed: https://t.co/kUqPh2NQSO

#ZedPH #CreditCardPH

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

The most powerful credit card you’ve ever seen. Zed gives you full control of your credit.

- Unlimited virtual cards
- Zero foreign transaction fees
- Add to Google Pay instantly
- Lock or unlock your cards anytime

Download Zed today: https://t.co/aWdVKEyZGP.

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

How does a conditionally approved US FI issue cards to foreign nationals, who in turn are subject to the regulatory frameworks of their own central banks?

You can’t issue cards to folks in most countries without a local license. That’s why fintechs have historically had to go country by country; not because of rails or currency constraints.

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

The short version of this post:
More consumer startups please!

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

Why are college students that never worked in a B trying to build for Bs?

In a world where anyone can build anything, what you choose to build is the only thing that matters.

Taste + Knowing your customers’ problem = Your best shot at success

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

Why are college students that never worked in a B trying to build for Bs?

In a world where anyone can build anything, what you choose to spend time on is the only thing that matters.

Taste + Knowing your customers’ problem = Your best shot at success

[Serena Yan @ysl_serena]

This is Stanford TreeHacks, one day before Valentine’s Day. These kids will spend the next three days building an AI agent B2B SaaS that makes them drop out of Ivy Leagues. The timing is intentional — it’s the best place to find both a cofounder and a gf/bf.

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

Introducing Zed Installments⚡️ Convert purchases in the app at just 1% interest per month.

No hidden fees. Clear terms. No early termination penalties. Freedom shouldn’t come with a fine 😉

Download the Zed app and get your invitation to apply: https://t.co/aWdVKEyZGP

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

We wanted to get this right, so thank you for the patience Android users! Welcome to Zed!!

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

Zed is now on Android ⚡

A next-generation credit card built for how you actually live—now available on Google Play.

Download the Zed app: https://t.co/aWdVKEyZGP

#Zed #AndroidPH #CreditCardPH #NoFXFees #VirtualCards

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

Paying your Zed balance with USDC is easy, with no off-ramps or unnecessary transfers between banks and wallets.

1. See your statement in PHP fiat
2. Confirm the USDC amount and address
3. Let us handle the automatic conversion to PHP
4. Your Zed balance is paid instantly

[Zed Credit Card @zedphilippines]

Zed is Southeast Asia’s first credit card that lets users pay their credit balance using crypto, starting with USDC.

Spend with your Zed credit card. Pay your balance with USDC.

Fewer steps. Skip the high fees. Simple, low-friction payments—now live.

[Amanda Orson @amandaorson]

Your credit card rewards exist because someone else is paying 25% APR. Cap that at 10% and the points don’t survive.

I spent years working inside fintech and card programs. That interest margin is the invisible buffer that makes rewards, lounges, and credits pencil out.

Capping credit card APRs at 10% sounds like an obvious consumer win. Cards charge 20 to 30%, many consumers revolve balances, and the system feels punitive.

But credit card economics are not just about interest rates. They are a cross-subsidized system where revolvers subsidize transactors, rewards rely on behavioral inefficiency, and risk-based pricing subsidizes access.

Remove one leg of that stool and the system does not become fairer; it rebalances. And the costs show up where consumers notice most.

Lets look at how this would impact 3 programs

1. AMEX Platinum

A 10% credit card APR cap would not make your card cheaper or better. You would still have access, but you would almost certainly get less value for the same or higher price.

The Platinum brand survives because its customers are affluent, pay in full, and tolerate high annual fees. What quietly supports that ecosystem is portfolio-level profitability, which allows AMEX to tolerate loss, overuse, and inefficiency in premium benefits.

When that margin shrinks, the cost shows up directly in your (lesser) benefits.

In a world where:
- Rewards economics tighten
- Devaluations become more likely
- Flexibility is reduced

Points become a liability to the issuer, and liabilities get repriced.

So what this likely means for you as a Platinum cardholder:
- Lounges do not expand to fix crowding. Instead, access tightens or amenities are reduced.
- Statement credits become harder to use, more fragmented, or less generous.
- Annual fees go up
- New approvals become more selective, even for high earners.

Your card still works, but the value proposition shifts. Platinum becomes more explicitly pay-to-play, with fewer hidden subsidies propping up premium perks.

You pay the same or more, and you get a little less in return.

Which is why some people are already warning that points devaluations become more likely in this environment (like @BowTiedBull this morning saying "Dump ALL your credit card points. All of them.")

2. Bilt Card

This program is the canary in the coal mine for what to expect.

Bilt’s super popular rent rewards worked because Wells Fargo was willing to subsidize them. The card offered 1 point per dollar on rent with no fees because Wells Fargo paid Bilt roughly 0.8 percent (80 bps) of each rent payment to fund rewards... despite earning little or no interchange on those transactions.

But that is some actuarial level math with a number of variables at risk that proved wrong/ unsustainable.

Wells Fargo was getting hosed $10 million a month on the program, so they exited the partnership years before the original end date and forced Bilt to restructure its rewards with a different bank

What does that teach us?

- When interest and interchange margins shrink, banks stop tolerating loss-leading reward programs.
- Interest income does not fund every reward directly, but it provides the buffer that allows experiments like Bilt to exist at all.
- Remove that buffer and rewards must be paid for explicitly.

Bilt’s shift to a three-tier lineup with annual fees is not an anomaly. It is the direction rewards go when credit stops quietly absorbing losses.

Pay-to-play rewards.

What feels like consumer protection will shows up as fewer perks, pay-to-play rewards, and less room for innovation.

3. Credit One & other Subprime Cards

Now the least glamorous corner.

Subprime cards get criticized for high APRs, annual fees, low limits, minimal rewards. But they exist for a reason.

They serve thin-file borrowers, damaged credit, people shut out of conventional loans, households using cards for liquidity not perks... but they charge high APRs because charge-offs exceed 8-10%, fraud and servicing costs are higher, and credit limits are small while fixed costs remain significant.

A 10% cap makes these products mathematically impossible.

These cards don't become cheaper. They cease to exist.

As @sytaylor noted this morning - "You realize this will push many more customers towards loan sharks?"

The demand for credit doesn't disappear... it migrates to BNPL with opaque effective APRs, chronic overdraft usage, fee-heavy installment loans, and less regulated lenders like loan sharks/ payday loans.

So who WOULD win? Debit-First Fintechs

One of the least discussed consequences: where would reward customers migrate?

I think 1% cashback programs are an obvious winner. Chime, Varo, Current and niche cards like Greenlight and Privacy.

(If you have not worked in a fintech or a bank you probably don't know what the Durbin Amedment is - but the TL;DR is that very large banks (BoA, Wells, JPMC) have capped interchange rates of around 27 bps on debit swipes.

Small banks with < $10B AUM, however, do not - they can earn 1-2% on interchange (avg was 160 bps or so last I checked).

Which is why all of the debit card fintech companies you've heard of are partnered with these smaller banks - they can offer rewards like 1% cashback programs and still have margin sufficient to build a business around.)

In a world where credit rewards shrink, access tightens, and annual fees rise, debit-based fintechs look better by comparison.

But consumers lose: credit protections, payment float, stronger dispute rights, credit-building opportunities.

TL;DR

An APR cap feels like consumer protection.

In practice it reshapes the market in ways that are easy to miss:
- It will shrink access to credit
- Eliminate rewards programs that aren't tied to high annual fees
- Force risk into less regulated channels
- Unintentionally advantages debit over credit
- Help affluent transactors more than vulnerable borrowers

Credit doesn't become cheaper. It becomes scarcer, less flexible, less transparent.

But banks will adapt.
Fintechs will adapt.

Consumers caught in the middle do not get protected.
They get fewer choices, worse products, and priced out.

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

If you have a chance to work with @daltonc and the team at @Standard_Cap, take that chance and never look back.

Your much wiser and experienced future self will thank you!

[Standard Capital @Standard_Cap]

Just opened up applications for the Standard Capital Winter 2026 funding cycle.

The application deadline is January 7th.

[Standard Capital @Standard_Cap]

Just opened up applications for the Standard Capital Winter 2026 funding cycle.

The application deadline is January 7th.

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

@ashleymayer This is gold

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

Thank you to the amazing @bayareawriter for the feature on @zedphilippines!

[Mary Ann Azevedo @bayareawriter]

https://t.co/NbqHzoKfrb

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

We’re thrilled to share that @zedphilippines has raised a $16.5M Series A led by @Accel, with participation from @rainfall, bringing our total funding to $22.5M between our Seed and Series A! We’re grateful to have the support of Accel and Rainfall alongside our Seed investors, @Valar_Ventures, @immad, @daltonc and others.

@dcojuangco and I started Zed to serve young people across Asia and build a bank for this moment. There is an undeniably massive opportunity to define the banking experience for a generation that is coming online just as large foundational models and agent infrastructure mature. Particularly in a region where greater than 50% of the population is under 30 and where there are 200 million (and growing) college educated, young professionals whose rapid ascension puts them in a position where traditional banks are unwilling or unable to serve them.

To do this, we’ve had to rebuild the primitives that banks are built on – whether in our underwriting or in the architecture of features that focus on a young professional’s lifestyle (travel, online shopping and peer-to-peer payments). Our mission is to build a bank for this new generation that delivers a hyper-personalized version of banking akin to a great private banker. If we can deliver this type of banking to the world’s largest and fastest growing consumer class in Asia, then it will lay the groundwork to serve young people everywhere.

If you’re a product‑minded engineer, designer or builder who wants to work on hard, high‑leverage problems — real‑time credit with sparse data, safety‑critical consumer systems, multi‑currency payments and AI‑driven experiences — we’d love to talk. We’re hiring in San Francisco (product, design, data science and engineering) and Manila (operations, risk and support). Come help us design the bank that this moment and that this generation deserves.

You can read more here: https://t.co/5ogYzQA6R3

[Steve Abraham @SAbraham84]

@stanfballupdate What do you know about Mirer (beyond the ND/NFL pedigree)? How has he not played in the last 3 years? Wasn’t he number 3 on the depth chart before spring ball?

I know it way only one drive, but that drive was a masterpiece. Plus you can’t teach 6’6.