Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Robinhood’s first credit card is here to compete with Apple | TechCrunch Minute”.
Is Robin Hood trying to play Apple’s game? Its latest announcement pits it against the tech giant as they both work to diversify their revenue streams. Now here’s the news consumer trading service, Robin Hood – is launching a credit card. It’S going to be open to subscribers of its Robin Hood gold service, which costs 50 bucks a year. Techwrench took a look at the card and we found that it set of perks and benefits to be rather compelling. After all, who doesn’t want 3 % cashback on all of their purchases, and, unsurprisingly, Robin Hood is linking the card to its trading service, allowing users to move cash earned over to their brokerage accounts. You know for more investing for existing Robin Hood users. The news should not be a shock after all, Robin Hood, a former startup darling and 2021 era.
Ipo bought startup X1, the other year for a little under $ 100 million, and what did X1 do well credit cards. This acquisition and subsequent product launch, however, are particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, Robin Hood is going up against other tech companies that also offer Consumer Credit Apple, for example, has been working to deepen its Financial relationship with its users for years through Apple pay, the Apple card and even recently, a high yield savings account now Apple’s Car grew to 12 million users last year, so the potential here for Robin Hood is Big, just as the footprint of its competitor is as well. Also, this move into consumer credit is kind of part and parcel of Robin Hood’s own work to expand its offerings. Robin Hood’s, well-known equity and trading Services have been expanded to include things like crypto Trading and retirement accounts in recent years. In short, as Apple expands more into fintech Services, Robin Hood is racing to eat a portion of the same Market, Tech Sava users who are content with a tech First Option instead of more of a traditional banking relationship.
Now, what does this mean for Robin Hood’s business? Well, Robin Hood will make money from its subscribers interchange fees and the like, which investors in the company may actually really enjoy, because, while Robin Hood shares have rallied from historic lows, they’re still worth just a fraction of its 2021 errow worth so for investors, a new Business line is probably more than welcome, but perhaps most importantly, Robin Hood’s credit card and Apple’s own fintech work underscore how wide Tech and Tech enabled companies are looking for growth. Why does Apple want to hold your cash? Why does Microsoft want to build you? A PC and help you search: why does Amazon own a movie studio? Why is alphabet working on self-driving cars, growth and the application of existing cash flows to new business opportunities to keep that growth coming so Robin Hood’s credit card move is similar, albeit from a smaller product and revenue base. In short, Robin Hood’s new card is one more step on every major technology company’s eventually doing things that are far from their starting point and slowly but surely starting to kind of look like one another.
I suppose now we just have to wait for Apple to get into consumer trading Amazon to get into web search and Microsoft to invest in self-driving cars right. If you need more on this check out, Maryanne asto’s article on the site or listen to her and I break this down on Equity Friday, .