2 - Interesting thought on the payment! Will investigate it. On the AML/KYC by regulation we can't rely on another party, we have to do our own :/
3 - Working on it!
Honestly, dollars are fungible. For less sophisticated customers, points which can be redeemed specifically for travel are attractive because people anticipate getting better deals than they end up with; but I'd be disappointed if that works well for the audience you're targetting here. Just make it a cashback %age based on the fees you get from the card network.
On the AML/KYC by regulation we can't rely on another party, we have to do our own :/
Ah, too bad. But even if you have to do your own AML/KYC paperwork, pulling data from Stripe should help with risk scoring, right? In particular, for those of us with unfunded but profitable startups.
I have plenty of ways of making money, and trying to optimize for a %age of cash back is not particularly interesting.
Miles and points on the other hand can be used to get experiences that would otherwise be completely out of question due to their price. It adds something meaningful to my life.
Flying to Australia in first class on Emirates is more memorable than making $1,500 of cash-back.
I cashed out a cash-rewards card recently, and bought a work chair with the proceeds; I don't think most miles/points plans would have let me get that.
If you have 115,000 points, you can use them towards a $1,150 cash credit. On the other hand, those points can also be used to book a Singapore to Zürich flight in their brand new first class, which would ordinarily cost $6,000+. one-way
An even more pronounced example: with just 30,000 points (or what would be $300 in cash-back), transferred to United, you can book HKG-SYD (a 13h trip) in business class, which would ordinarily cost $3,000+ one-way.
Don't care about cashback cards under 5%. Earning miles and points is much more meaningful and attractive.
2 - integrating stripe as a datasource for underwriting is definetly in our roadmap!
That's a hell of a sign up bonus! Is the $5K for entirely new AWS accounts or do existing accounts that sign up and update their current account with the new payment option as the primary get it as well?