Kasheesh Launches an App That Lets Users Split Purchases Among Their Existing Cards

While buy now, pay later financing has been a big hit with consumers, especially those who use the loans to increase their buying power or as a budgeting tool, they have come under criticism for increasing debt loads for consumers with shaky finances. That has given rise to the idea of increasing users’ buying power by leveraging the credit and cash they already have.

The latest entry in this business is digital-payments platform provider Kasheesh. Late on Thursday, it officially debuted a free application that allows consumers to split online purchases among their existing credit, debit, and gift cards.

Consumers can upload as many as 10 credit, debit, or gift cards to the Kasheesh app, then split the cost of a purchase between any combination of those cards. The idea is to split purchases between multiple cards to avoid maxing out credit limits on specific cards and to maximize rewards, the company says. Consumers carry an average of 3.8 payment cards in their wallets, according to Experian. To leverage rewards, Kasheesh says its artificial-intelligence engine selects from the uploaded cards the one offering the best rewards based on the purchase.

“Rather than force a consumer to choose just one card for the transaction at hand, Kasheesh makes every card top of wallet, splitting the burden of cost across any combination each user has,” Kasheesh chief executive and cofounder Sam Miller says by email. “Further, because Kasheesh isn’t a lender or bank, the total purchasing power is maximized by the user’s own spending limits that are available to them at that moment, versus taking on extra debt.”

When making an online purchase, the consumer chooses the amount to put on each card. Next, Kasheesh uses open-banking technology from Plaid Inc. and Stripe Inc. to verify the account, open-to-buy, and cash availability to make the purchases. Once the transaction is approved, Kasheesh sends the consumer a one-time digital card to complete the purchase.

Security around the transaction is provided by verifying the cardholder’s Social Security number at the time of purchase.

Kasheesh, which describes its app as “tailored consumer finance,” says the potential market for splitting a purchase across multiple cards is “as big as any BNPL market.” Miller adds the idea for the app was spawned by consumer demand it identified as far back as 2016.

The Kasheesh app is compatible with any e-commerce platform that accepts Mastercard. The company earns interchange through the MasterCard network on each transaction. Kasheesh’s average order value per customer is typically more than $1,800, higher than the average BNPL purchase, the company says.

While the Kasheesh app will not work in digital wallets, Miller says the company plans to add that capability. “Knowing Web apps can still be applied across desktop, tablet, and mobile, [that] was where we focused attention first; especially since it hits the generational overlap of computer owners, especially those that still shop online using their home computer,” he says. Since its soft launch in January, Kasheesh has enabled more than $11 million in transactions.

One advantage of its app, the company says, is that since consumers are not applying for a loan or new card, their purchasing power is tied to their available open-to-buy or cash on hand, not their credit score. In addition to its official launch, Kasheesh announced it has raised $5.5 million in seed funding from institutional and celebrity angel investors, including Tribe Capital, Anthemis, and Courtside, Super Bowl LVI-winning wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr, investor Sahil Bloom, and actor Robin Wright.