The news: Empower rebranded the Petal portfolio into Tilt, a trio of cards aimed at credit builders. WebBank will remain the issuer for the cards.

The new portfolio: Like Petal, the Tilt portfolio is designed to accommodate cardholders from different levels of creditworthiness.

• Tilt Motion and Tilt Essentials are available for customers with poor to good credit history.
• Tilt Engage is designed for those with good to excellent credit history.

The rewards structure: None of the Tilt cards include a welcome offer, and only Tilt Engage requires an annual fee of $59. 

• Tilt Essentials: 3% cash back on gas and groceries when cardholders set their purchases on autopay, and 1% back on other categories
• Tilt Motion and Engage: 1% to 10% back at select merchants. Tilt doesn’t disclose what additional perks you get for the annual fee.

Alternate underwriting: Cardholders are evaluated based on a proprietary algorithm that reviews information like income, savings, and spending habits instead of relying on FICO scores or credit reports.

Our take: Alternative lenders like Tilt do help individuals start or rebuild their history of creditworthiness. However, Tilt may come into a profitability—or even operational—problem after JPMorgan Chase said it would revoke fintechs’ free access to consumer financial information. 

To apply for Tilt, many cardholders have to link their banking information through Plaid. Jamie Dimon has directly attacked Plaid as a fintech middleman that “massively overtax[es]” its system with unnecessary pings. If Plaid’s profitability model fails, Tilt likely won’t have the means to approve new cardholders. Or, it may have to form a direct tie-up with JPMorgan like Coinbase did—potentially eroding its own income or degrading the user experience.

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