Investing in Kasheesh

multi-card payments $100 = 💳 (60) +💳 (25)+ 💳 (15)

Have you ever found yourself in that awkward situation where you’re checking out items at a retail store and you start pulling out various debit/credit cards to ‘fund’ the purchase? Or have you ever used a mix of a gift card and a debit card at an in-store checkout? There are some folks who might even find themselves in the unfortunate situation where they do not have the sufficient funds for a transaction. The reality is that many consumers have been pigeonholed into using risky payment methods like Buy-Now-Pay-Later to ultimately fund their purchases. Studies have shown that approximately more than half of consumers say they “have regretted making a purchase through BNPL because the item was too expensive” (C+R Research).

Although e-commerce is booming, 70% of carts are still abandoned at the checkout. For merchants, an abandoned cart means you’re missing out on potential sales. All the marketing dollars that have been spent towards getting the customer to your site, browsing your catalogue, and eventually building interest in your product has gone to waste. It’s unfortunate and it happens too often. By ‘too often’ I mean it’s a $10T problem that many players in the market are attempting to solve. The checkout experience needs to continuously be tested and scrutinized as the wants and needs of the consumer are ever-evolving. Payments is the final stage or last mile of the customer journey and is arguably the most critical piece of the checkout experience. I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking and investing around the future of commerce. For me, I believe that the ‘checkout experience’ is not separate from the ‘shopping experience’. Therefore if merchants want to grow, scale and survive in today’s market, they must take into account that last, but essential mile to the checkout → Payments.

E-commerce payments have advanced over the last couple of years with the introduction of BNPL, closed-loop credit cards (i.e co-branded credit cards), gift cards, GooglePay, ApplePay, etc. The checkout page is littered with various payment buttons that are in competition with one another to be the consumers preferred payment method of choice. However, there is one particular method of payment that has yet to be explored. Split payments.

Splitting payments is not really a new concept. The idea has been around for a while but has only been applied in select use cases outside of the traditional brick & mortar case. For example, the group financing app, Braid, creates shared wallets for a group of friends to split payments for rent, dinner, gas, etc. However, outside of the group spending use case, split payments has remained an untapped opportunity for the individual at the checkout.

Until Kasheesh…

Kasheesh offers an integrated browser plugin that allows customers to split payments across multiple cards at the checkout on any e-commerce website. After users create an account with Kasheesh and complete their KYC process, users can then link their various cards/accounts (via Plaid). Once the consumer arrives at a checkout page, Kasheesh will suggest an optimal split based on the user’s available balances, credit-card APR, and rewards. Once the split is finalized, Kasheesh will issue a one-time, virtual card and the user will fund the Kasheesh card using their linked cards/accounts to complete the purchase.

When I first met Sam and Kevin for the first time, I knew rather quickly that this was the right team to build a fast growing, consumer payments company. I’ve been so fortunate to have spent the last couple of months building a solid relationship with Sam and Kevin. Over time, my conviction in the team and product has only grown stronger, and since their initial launch of the Beta, Kasheesh has seen amazing traction and product market fit. I believe Kasheesh can become the top of wallet card for consumers. I could not be happier to have invested in Kasheesh’s $5.5m seed round alongside Thirty Five Ventures (Kevin Durant), Tribe Capital, Courtside Ventures, 2463 Ventures (Odell Beckham Jr.), Anthemis, Adapt Ventures, as well as angels Sahil Bloom, Jason Gus, Chris Wallace, and Robin Wright.