Cardless raised $30 million in a growth round in November 2024 led by Activant Capital, bringing total funding to over $90 million. The round included participation from Mischief, Industry Ventures, Thayer Ventures, Assurant, and Amex Ventures.

Previous investors across earlier rounds include Accomplice, Pear VC, Greycroft, and ownership groups from the Phoenix Suns and Boston Celtics. The company previously raised a $40 million Series B in July 2021 at a valuation of approximately $350 million.

Cardless is an embedded credit card platform that allows brands to launch co-branded credit cards directly within their own mobile apps and websites through APIs. Rather than redirecting customers to a separate banking interface, Cardless enables brands to offer the complete credit card experience natively within their existing digital properties.

The platform works by allowing brands to drop a few lines of Cardless code into their apps, instantly creating an integrated credit card application flow. When customers apply, Cardless handles identity verification, credit checks, and underwriting in the background. Approved customers receive a digital card within seconds that appears directly in the brand's app, with physical cards shipped separately.

The embedded experience includes all core banking functions within the brand's interface. Customers can view their balance, transaction history, make payments, contact support, freeze their card, and manage rewards without ever leaving the brand's app. Cardless provides pre-built UI components for application, account management, and rewards that developers can customize and integrate.

The platform is network-agnostic, supporting Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Cardless partners with First Electronic Bank as the issuing bank while serving as program manager and servicer. The system integrates with existing customer data, allowing brands to pre-fill applications and improve conversion rates.

Brands can configure rewards programs through a Cardless dashboard, setting up everything from traditional cashback to cryptocurrency rewards to SKU-level incentives. The platform includes fraud monitoring, dispute handling, and granular spend analytics so brands can track program performance and optimize rewards in real-time.

Cardless operates as a B2B2C platform that monetizes through multiple revenue streams tied to credit card program performance. The company earns interchange fees on every transaction, typically taking a percentage of the 1-3% that merchants pay on credit card purchases. They also generate interest income when cardholders carry balances and collect various fees including annual fees, late fees, and foreign transaction fees.

The business model centers on speed-to-market as a key differentiator. While traditional bank partnerships require 12-18 months to launch co-branded cards, Cardless can deploy programs in under 10 weeks through their API-first architecture. This allows them to serve mid-tier brands that were previously priced out of co-branded card programs with major banks.

Cardless charges brands setup fees and ongoing program management fees for platform access, while brands benefit from customer acquisition, increased engagement, and data insights. The embedded model creates stickier customer relationships since the credit card experience lives within the brand's own app rather than a separate banking interface.

The platform's modular architecture enables expansion into adjacent financial products. The same issuer-processor infrastructure can support expense management, virtual cards, buy-now-pay-later offerings, and specialized lending products, each generating additional revenue streams while leveraging existing customer relationships.

Revenue scales with transaction volume rather than requiring proportional increases in operational costs. As Cardless improves their pre-labeling and automation tools, they can process more applications and transactions with the same infrastructure, expanding margins over time.

Imprint positions itself as a comprehensive card issuer handling underwriting, funding lines, and digital customer experience. The company recently won major programs including Rakuten's American Express card and claims faster deployment than traditional banks. Imprint differentiates through SKU-level real-time rewards and in-house credit decisioning, competing directly with Cardless on speed-to-market and digital-first experiences.

Marqeta partnered with Deserve in 2025 to launch a complete credit card platform, combining Marqeta's global payment processing infrastructure with Deserve's program management capabilities. This partnership targets fintechs and non-banks wanting end-to-end credit programs, leveraging Marqeta's existing relationships with major brands and their ability to bundle credit with existing debit and prepaid services.

Cross River Bank offers banking-as-a-service including card issuing, providing the regulatory infrastructure that many fintech card programs require. Their comprehensive compliance and lending capabilities make them both a potential partner and competitor to Cardless, especially for brands that need a regulated banking entity.

JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Capital One, and Synchrony still control approximately 70% of co-branded credit card receivables through relationships with major airlines, hotels, and retailers. These banks are investing heavily in proprietary technology to reduce dependence on third-party processors and defend their economics against fintech challengers.

Traditional banks compete on larger marketing budgets, established brand relationships, and deeper balance sheets that can fund more generous rewards programs. However, they struggle with speed-to-market and digital experience flexibility, creating opportunities for platforms like Cardless to win mid-tier brands seeking faster deployment and more control over the customer experience.

Some competitors are building owned infrastructure to capture more value per customer. This approach enables higher margins by controlling the full customer journey, from application through servicing, rather than relying on third-party providers. While Cardless's asset-light model enables faster expansion, vertically integrated competitors can potentially offer better unit economics and more seamless experiences.

Cardless is expanding beyond traditional credit cards into buy-now-pay-later and broader lending products. Their existing platform infrastructure can support installment lending, which increases average transaction sizes and provides additional revenue per customer relationship. The company's partnership with Ascenda adds multi-currency rewards capabilities, enabling more sophisticated loyalty programs.

The small business credit market represents a significant expansion opportunity. The Alibaba.com Business Edge card targeting U.S. small businesses purchasing internationally demonstrates Cardless's ability to serve the 630,000 SMEs on Alibaba's platform. Business cards typically generate higher interchange fees and transaction volumes than consumer cards.

Virtual cards and expense management represent natural extensions of the core platform. The same issuer-processor infrastructure can support corporate expense management, fleet cards, and specialized vertical solutions, each commanding higher interchange rates and additional software fees.

Mid-tier retail and direct-to-consumer brands represent a large underserved market. These companies were previously unable to access co-branded card programs due to minimum volume requirements and long deployment timelines with traditional banks. Cardless's 10-week launch timeline and lower minimums open this market segment.

The embedded platform approach enables expansion into non-traditional card issuers. Fintech companies, software platforms, and digital marketplaces can now offer credit cards as a feature within their existing products, creating new customer acquisition channels beyond traditional brand partnerships.

International expansion through existing partners provides geographic growth without requiring local banking licenses. The Alibaba partnership's focus on cross-border transactions positions Cardless to capture international SMB spend, while their 175-country capability through provider networks enables serving multinational brands.

The Ascenda partnership provides turnkey access to approximately 100 financial institution and merchant loyalty clients worldwide, reducing customer acquisition costs and enabling co-branded cards as add-on products within existing rewards programs.

Data and analytics services represent additional revenue opportunities. Cardless can monetize the transaction data and customer insights generated by their platform, providing brands with detailed spend analytics and customer behavior data beyond basic card program management.

The same core infrastructure can power adjacent financial services including personal loans, merchant cash advances, and specialized financing products, leveraging existing customer relationships and underwriting capabilities to expand revenue per customer.

Regulatory pressure: The Credit Card Competition Act and other regulatory initiatives targeting interchange fees could significantly impact Cardless's core revenue model. Since the company monetizes primarily through interchange fee sharing, any reduction in these fees would directly affect profitability and potentially make co-branded card programs less attractive to partner brands.

Bank partner concentration: Cardless relies on First Electronic Bank as their primary issuing partner, creating single-point-of-failure risk. If this relationship were disrupted or if the partner bank faced regulatory issues, Cardless would need to migrate programs to new banking partners, potentially causing service disruptions and customer attrition.

Market saturation: As more fintech platforms enter the co-branded card space with similar speed-to-market value propositions, competition for brand partnerships will intensify. The differentiation between platforms may narrow to primarily price-based competition, compressing margins and making it harder to justify the technology investment required to maintain platform leadership.