Capital One to Kasheesh: Startups at the forefront of consumer finance
Pat cut his teeth on two unique high-growth startups in the payments realm during his decade at Capital One. Both set the stage for his work in game-changing consumer finance products today.
When Pat began working with Paribus — Capital One’s then-newest acquisition — the startup comprised fewer than 15 people and had built an already-beloved product.
Paribus saved consumers cash on price-matched online purchases by automatically monitoring for price drops and filing claims.
Shortly after Paribus, Capital One added Wikibuy to their family of acquisitions.
The startup’s core offering was a browser extension for receiving coupons and cashback.
While Wikibuy’s team comprised fewer than 20 people, they were already generating revenue — proving the popularity and viability of consumer tools for financial empowerment.
“At Capital One, I never felt stagnant. I could move through a number of different roles and different lines of business, and even learn so much about the startup culture and environment.”
3 tips for building the best possible financial product
If you’re building a product that deals with users’ money, the margin for error should be zero.
At Capital One, Pat led the product experience for paying down your credit card. To this day, he still lives and breathes consumer finance at Kasheesh.
One lesson he’s learned on this journey? When you make mistakes that impact someone’s financial livelihood, you will undoubtedly lose that customer forever.
That’s why Pat leads the product team at Kasheesh to balance:
- Rapid iteration, execution, and testing as a younger startup
- Dedication to a secure, high-quality financial experience for users
Below, he shares 3 tactics for ensuring consumers’ cash is safe with you as a financial product:
1. Prioritize security and privacy above all
The team at Kasheesh takes care to provide the same degree of professionalism and reliability that customers expect from legacy banks.
This ranges from a top-of-the-line UI/UX to airtight security surrounding users’ financials.
2. Your product must work 100% of the time
As a product manager, Pat emphasizes, “The most important thing about a product is that it works right — every single time.”
You can always return to improve the form and appearance by tweaking the graphics, UI, etc.
However, if the product or feature does not do what it promises, that is the easiest way to lose a loyal user — especially when you’re affecting their financial livelihood.
3. Make sure you would use your own product
Before Kasheesh launches a new dashboard or extension update, Pat and the product team will test it thoroughly by using it daily. That’s because PMs must explore, understand, and come to trust the product the way their user does.
After all, if you don’t trust your product to touch your finances, how can you expect your customers to extend that trust?
“If a product doesn’t look or feel right to the team, it obviously will not feel right for our customers. When users have enough faith to put financial confidence in Kasheesh, we need to ensure we pay that back in kind.”
Kasheesh addresses the “obvious need in the market”
At Capital One, a bulk of Pat’s time was spent identifying how consumer finances and money movement would evolve over the next 5–10 years.
He and his team eventually came to a set of conclusions:
- Most financial products are built to be siloed, with one product to one user.
- Customers can rarely get a transparent, end-to-end view of their financial ecosystem.
- As such, the average consumer can’t make their whole wallet work for them cohesively.
While this dilemma weighed on Pat, he soon spoke with two founding team members of Kasheesh — through a totally chance meeting at a bar. He heard the Kasheesh pitch, visited our office, and found that we were deeply aligned in two ways:
- Relevant experience — Kasheesh is a new leader in alternative consumer payments and finance. Pat had just spent over 10 years building well-received products in that landscape.
- Holistic view of consumer finance — Kasheesh works far beyond the one-to-one relationship between consumers and their banks; we work with every facet of a customer’s wallet to spread out spending, generate insights and recommendations, and more.
With this, Pat was hooked. He wanted to be part of the mission to combat predatory financial institutions and help consumers receive practical financial education. In his words:
“After my past experiences, I saw those obvious needs in the market, which meant I was just so aligned with Sam and the Kasheesh team’s vision. It was a really, really natural fit.”
The future of consumer finance
Today, Pat highlights three product and feature releases by Kasheesh that will only continue to educate and empower the everyday consumer on their financial ecosystem.
- Recommendations for splitting your purchases — Customers can leverage Kasheesh to split online payments across their cards in any configuration they want (50/50, 75/25, and so on). Soon, our users will be able to trial a recommendation engine that suggests the best split to reduce your credit interest, optimize your credit utilization, and more.
- Mobile access for even greater accessibility — Kasheesh users can now enjoy a mobile version of our dashboard, enabling an additional level of flexibility if customers are in a financial pinch on the go.
- More ways to apply Kasheesh — Users will soon see even more multi-use scenarios, such as utilizing Kasheesh card numbers to split recurring purchases (i.e. that Netflix subscription) or use Tap to Pay.
“It’s painfully clear that financial literacy is far below where we’d like it to be. Many people don’t know the difference between a minimum payment, a statement balance, and a current balance. So, anything Kasheesh can do to open that door and make things more transparent for consumers will be beneficial.”
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