Can the Yonder Card Replace Revolut? We Asked the CEO!

In this episode of Banking Without Borders, we sit down with Tim Chong, co-founder and CEO of Yonder. 

In this episode:

• Yonder Premium vs Revolut Metal — Tim makes the case for why they're not actually competing for the same thing
• Why most Yonder customers also use Revolut — and why Tim thinks that's fine
• The partner network explained — how brands get selected, why over half approach Yonder inbound, and the Netflix analogy Tim uses to describe curation at scale
• The fair usage policy — and whether it creates a frustrating experience for members who can't find anything to redeem
• Is Revolut a threat? Tim responds to the prospect of a Revolut credit card launching in the UK
• The debt trap question — is Yonder glamorising credit to a generation already under financial pressure?
• Netherlands expansion and what comes next for Yonder in the UK and Europe

Connect with us (via LinkedIn)

Jan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-watermann/

Jonny: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonny-pease

Got a question or topic you want us to cover? Drop us a message at jonny@technicallymoney.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Okay, welcome back to another episode of Banking Without Borders. So Yonder is a reward card that launched in 2022 with a pretty simple idea that your spending should unlock experiences and rewards that you actually want. Since then, it's grown into one of the most talked-about fintech products in the UK and recently expanded into the premium debit card space. So Yan and I are joined by their CEO and co-founder Tim Chong. And Tim, Yonder has been compared to Amex since day one. And I know you've always pushed back on that. But there's another comparison that we think is more relevant. Yonder Premium includes worldwide travel insurance, accelerated points earning at four or five of every one pound spent, depending on whether you're on credit or debit card, and a welcome bonus of ten thousand points when you spend a thousand pounds in thirty days. That costs£15 a month. Revolute Metal is also£15 a month. You get travel insurance rewards, subscriptions from the FT and Perplexity Pro, and of course, Revolut's app, which is arguably one of the best banking apps in the world. So the first question we want to ask you is why would someone pick Yonder Premium over Revolute Metal?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

The interesting thing is that we see a lot of our members actually use both. It's not a Revolute or Yonder type economy. Revolute is the place where they do things like stock trading, crypto, savings, money remittance, sort of the sort of the more wallet-style features. But it's less built around, and even though they've got RevPoints, and you know, all of you will be very familiar with it, the Rev points are, you know, you use them for sort of like hotel vouchers, gift cards, maybe some LI miles transfers, and if you do the maths, they're still not as lucrative, to be quite honest, as an Amex, you know, BA Plus, if you want to earn Avios points. So you sort of kind of think about you've got some customers who are like, hey, I want to get the classic Avios program, and we're like, great, stick with your IMAX, stick with your Barclays Avios car. I think those are perfect for those who like the traditional um Avios program. And then you kind of think about Revolute, which is really known for the subscription with a bundle that you get. Essentially, you pay a fixed fee and you get a set of things included for free. It's less built around like a really rich rewards program built around discovery, built around trying new things, built around lifestyle. I mean, all the things you describe there, perplexity and NFT, are not things that you do. Things you kind of consume are the things that you like might buy and you know get an actual subscription, but they're not things that you go up with friends for. A lot of what Yonder customers really do is they say, hey, like, I'm gonna go and spend and discover with Yonder, I'm gonna go out and travel and like try out a new theatre show, I'm gonna book a new dinner, I'm gonna check out a new Michelin star restaurant, I'm gonna put it on Yonder and get the whole dinner covered, um, and then I'll go and do my stock trading with my Revolut account and maybe save and invest with my traditional high street bank. And that's really how we think about the dichotomy of it. I would say that uh Asian consumers, which I which I study a lot of time, which is like my heritage, really like the kind of super app concept where you have everything kind of crammed into one app, whether it's like, you know, food delivery, banking, your Chinese red packet, everything kind of like crammed into one app, and that's very much like a super app culture. I would say like in Western market, it's not how we think about things. Like I use Instagram for seeing what my friends are up to. I then use WhatsApp to do like one-to-one and grip chats. I then might use YouTube for video content, and I don't mix them all together. Like I don't use Instagram messaging to speak to my friends, and I don't use Instagram videos to watch content, I use YouTube for that. Um so we kind of think about each sort of financial product, I guess it's in a slightly different job to be done in a consumer's life. We really want to be the place where you feel like you're a tourist in your own city and feel like a local whenever you travel. That's where we really excel, and that's why our consumers continue to use us and really love us. But we are like unapologetically not trying to be a banking super app that tries to do everything. That's not who we are. And a lot of our customers really like the simplicity of that, right? It's like I know exactly what you guys do and what you stand for, and you're not trying to do everything else crammed into one app, you're you're really focused on this cool idea of like lifestyle discovery, do things with friends. And then you might use your revolute for everything else in sort of your financial life as well.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I want to discuss the idea of discoverability or or discovering new products and brands with Yonder because that's one thing that I really enjoyed about using it. You know, I discovered uh a new brand of chili oil that I've g come to really, really appreciate from Yep Kitchen. But there were times as well, and I think there are people listening to this, people who are watching this who've used Yonder who would have the same complaint. I mean, there were times that I couldn't find anything. And it it could be, well, a month. I I think, am I right in saying that you kind of refresh the experiences or the opportunities every month? There are long periods of time where I couldn't redeem, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because I'm just accumulating points during that period anyway. But then I'm also somewhat hamstrung by the fair usage policy that restricts how many points I can redeem at any one point. You know, trying to collect a lot might not actually be that important or that useful. But I wonder how you answer and how you speak to the people that have difficulty finding things to redeem with on Yonder.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, it's a good question. And look, to be completely honest, it's something that we always want to continue to grow. I would say that the most important investment we're making is continue to expand that network of partners. One of the things we realize is that there are times when you really love the discovery aspect of Yonder, trying something new, trying something different, and there are times where you just want consistency. And so the big area of focus right now is actually building out a bit more, let's call it consistent things. Things that aren't necessarily exciting to discover, but things that you know are always gonna be there. So we're doing a lot more like coffee shops that we work with are always on now. Some of the more practical things like lounge passes and being gonna use your lounge points for lounge pass, they're not necessarily the most exciting things, but at least it feels like you always have something there that's for you all the time. But continue to also create moments of like, hey, that's quite new, and that's a bit of a spark moment as well. So I the way we discover internally is we always want anchor brands where they're like always on, they're always accessible. I'll just go as a bit more utility. The thing is that you're like, great, I can now use my points for that tick. But you're not gonna be like, guys, check this out. Check out this new place. You're not gonna be like, wow, I'm so excited, I got my e sim on point, so I got to use the lounge again. And let's be honest, like most lounges are pretty commoditized, they're all fine. What I really want though is to have moments, you know, every couple of months, not every month, maybe not every not every day, every couple of months you'll be like, check out this new place I found in Yonder, let's go in there and check it out and celebrate. Let's do a sauna experience, let's go and do an ice plunge with some friends. Um L3 is a really important part because that's part of the magic. What I feel like most reward cards are built around at the moment are very utility focused. How am I getting the best financial deal? And that's important, and we think that's still a very important thing for people to have. But I would say that the best sort of experience you have in life aren't often about how much money you spent, but like the overall experience you had. Like, did I have fun there? It was something really special. And so for us, we want to make sure that our customers are having moments of, yes, I'm getting enough value to justify the fee. Yes, I've got like every month I've got something that's there for me, it's something that I will continue to work on. But I also want to make sure you have these like spark moments, the moments where you get excited about it and you get that elation experience. And like, let's be honest, you don't get that with a bundled subscription. You don't can be like, oh thank god I got my FT subscription covered again this month. But the moment we hear when someone goes, Oh my god, this new place I discovered took my four friends out there and had it covered, that was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

I I did have times in which I've I felt frustrated because there were brands that I appreciated or I redeemed with that disappeared. How are you choosing an anchor brand? Do you speak to the audience? Do you ask people? I don't remember seeing it an opportunity to say, it wouldn't be like a voting system necessarily, but to say, hey, like I'll this I want to provide feedback, I want to click here and say, you know, like a CTA that says, Would you like to see this brand again? Would you like to see more of this brand? Because I think there were times where I I, you know, I redeemed and then they disappeared. And that was quite sad, to be frank. That put me off.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we think about certain brands where you could you kinda need to save up for it, and so they need to be there for a long period of time. So Qatar AOA's has been a longtime partner for us. Yes. We've had them on for a very long time. And it's because we recognize that imagine saving up and all of a sudden it disappears. That's I'll stop great. It's this weird thing that I describe it as like revealed preference versated preference in the sense of, do you want to see the same restaurants every month? You kind of do, but then after all, you get a bit sick of it. And so we do want to keep that freshness as well. And the other thing that's important to us is uh there's always the procrastination. I mean, we all procrastinate. It's like, I'll go later, I'll go later, I'll go later, I'll go later. Part of the reason why we want to bring brands on and off all the time is we always want you to be like, don't wait. Go check it out now. Check it out now. I do recognize it creates frustration. The flip side is uh I actually think that people tend to just leave them on and never go ever. And that's the flip side. And you know, if think about your traditional rewards programs where you save up your points forever. I mean, the countless people that save up for many freaking flying mile for that one thing and they just never get around to doing it. That's me. Right? They never get around to doing, I'll save up that one day and do it. And maybe you do do it, but by and large, we know a lot of customers just keep putting it off, keep putting it off, keep putting it off. I almost want to be like, no, no, don't put it off. Go and enjoy that moment, go and enjoy that trip. Almost imagine if your AVS point did expire, you'd you would go and book that flight. It's a bit of a double-H saw though, right? Because part of that means you need to take stuff to come off so that you kind of create a bit of that urgency. But again, for some of the things that we recognize uh need more consistency. So, like our lounge partnerships are very consistent. You know, our partnership with Turo as well, and Kyoto. So some of these ones and hotels are things that we we really focus on in much longer-term partnerships with. Some of the islands we actually agree with a partner, we'll put you on for a period of time, and then we'll take you off because we want to keep it fresh as well. Um, but I do I do recognise that not everyone loves that, and that's that's okay, actually. That's sort of the choice we've made.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Revolute got their banking license recently in the UK after what felt like a century. I mean, I think it's fair to say that we'll see us a credit card from them in the near future in the United Kingdom, I'm sure. Are you threatened by that then?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

I mean, the first thing is um Revolute have had a credit card for quite a while now.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

In in yeah, in Ireland. In Ireland, I know, and you can get accelerated rev points earnings, but in the United Kingdom specifically.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

I think about all your entrances, but also at the end of the day, what would I do differently? The answer is not not much, which is i focus on what our customers want and focus on continue to invest in that. And that is that is, I know it sounds like a very cliche CEO answer, but generally, like, think about like what do you find what would we fundamentally do differently? I think the answer is like we would go deeper on what makes us different and try not to play the game on what they're doing because they are formidable, they have a great product. I I have a lot of respect for the team. They're uh in fact, a lot of our team work with them, but we have a lot of respect for what they do. They have consciously made its choice though, which they want to build a super app. That's that's Nick's stated direction, super app. We want to do everything really well. They're in HR, they're in SIM cards now, they have their own local SIM cards. They have stated they want to move into current accounts and compete against Monzo and Chase. They are doing they want to move into wealth management. They so there's like a stated direction of like really fighting on many dimensions. I think they'll do a great job of that and be very successful doing that. The very nature of doing that though is means you need to build sort of a diluted product that sort of works for everyone.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Therefore, the very nature of that means you can't be as focused and as really like focused on your segment. Where we're saying, like, Yonder's really great for this type of consumer, it's not great for many others. And and that's the philosophy we've always had. We've never ever said to anyone, if you love Avios, go to Yonder. We actually say that you, if that's what you love, stay. But if you want something different, that's where Yonder's great. If you're if you're if that's not what you want to do, Yonder's a great. And so I think that's maybe that's sort of I would describe as like assertive position that we take in the market of what we are and what we aren't, and not trying to be every dabby one.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

A certain perspective, I'd say you're superior. You know, you you are giving people those wow experiences which you're just not gonna ascertain from an FT digital subscription. You know, your travel insurance without getting into the weeds is is superior. There are things that you're definitely doing that are better. But I I do wonder about the scale problem. How do you scale Yonder when things have to be curated, when things have to be quite niche? How do you appeal to a larger audience? I I'm sure this is something you've thought about, but I'd be curious to see how you're gonna approach that. You can scale the cities, for example, um, and just have more localized experiences. Is there not a ceiling of potential users that you can have at Yonder as a result of trying to be heavily curated and super special?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Yeah, I think, and maybe quick touch on travel insurance. And I think this is very where the small details really matter. Sure. Like we made an excellent effort to make sure it was actually usable. There's a lot of credit cards, and you've looked at the fine print where the travel insurance covers accident cover only on public transport. In fact, it's like that's not very usable. Uh whereas what we did was saying, like, what would we recommend to a friend? And so we have things like off-piece ski cover. No one covers off-piece ski cover, by the way. It's very like niche, but like our kind of customers do off-piste, and they're like, I don't want to get another cover because I want to go off-piece and enjoy myself. It's off-piece with a guide, by the way. Um, and it's things like car rental higher excess. Again, seems very trivial, but I'm sure all of us here have been to that car rental place in Greece where they say, hey, the car rental excess, by the way, if you get the insurance, it's another hundred quid. And you're like, gosh, 100 quid to get the insurance covered. And we're like, no, no, no, we're gonna solve that. And so for us, we're like, let's not cut corners on the small things. Something as simple as insurance, where we said, let's make sure there's no little things, the gotchas. Like the car rental high excess, even the amount of coverage, we benchmarked it to make sure it covers all the car high access places in Europe. So these are like small details that people, you know, may not like talk about and go, hey, let's put a blog about yonder's cut if you know travel insurance. But it's something that people really care about and they always really like that we care about these little details as well. I think on the scaling question, I think it's a it's a really good question. Um, it goes back to this really key philosophy I have, which is anchor brands that give us scale. And you know, we've started to work with larger group brands as well. You know, we work with the likes of Oaxaca, which is a much wider group, but we also work with the Aubrey in and we also work with Hestons, which are like Mitchell and Star restaurants. And so we always want to make sure we have a combination. We think it's an end rather than an or. Think about Netflix and you open up your Netflix. You've got some flagship content that is special. You know, Stranger Things, Drive to Survive. The other thing is that like they market, sign up for Netflix and get blah. It's on the banner and you don't have the app. And then you've got this thick back catalogue of Gilmore girls, of family guy, of modern family, of like, let's call it like friends, of like filler content, where you you don't really, it's not your key flagship thing that makes it special, but it always makes sure you have something there. And so for us, we think about the long-term vision for Yonder is always have flagship things that every month or so, every even couple of months, there's something there you're like, whoa, that's exciting, that's cool. But also there's a big deep catalogue of brands that I would kind of call as like utility brands. You know, maybe it's a car rental provider we want to partner with, maybe it's a hotel chain that we want to partner with, which, you know, quite frankly, isn't like, oh my gosh, I've discovered Hertz car rental because of yonder. It's like, no, no, no, no. But I'm getting value from it and I can use my points. And so we think about it as an end statement rather than all. And what that means is that we can still give you a breath of partners to access and get value from, but also make sure we surface to you really, really special things that you never would have discovered without us as well. And that's also where part of the work we're doing with LLM has become really powerful because we start to then surface brands at the right time. When we know you want to discover something, surface that. When you're in a bit of a utility mode, make sure we surface something there as well. Uh, and for us, it's always having both, and that's how we've always thought about it as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I assume there's a lot of work involved in in hand picking these brands. How does that process typically look like? Is that uh would they approach you, then you have some criteria in mind that you'd uh you'd see if they fulfill it and then decide whether you want to accept them into Yonder or not? Or is it something where you do very targeted outreach and just approach uh whoever is responsible at that company and uh convince them to join the app?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

It's a bit of both, actually. Um actually, surprisingly, more than half our brands come for inbound, they reach out to us. And part of being very sort of unapologetic about where we stand also attracts the kind of brands we want to work with. Because the flip side is if you're a boutique brand that is like really like thoughts about your brand, do you wanna be on a platform like Revolute, where there's 50 million customers, and you're gonna be another offer amongst uh coupon cards, coupons and uh a boots voucher and an Amazon voucher and an ESIM credit? Like, do you want to live there? Or do you wanna be part of Yonder where we're gonna make sure we tell a great story about you, we're gonna make sure we use great photography, we're gonna make sure we really get you in front of the right people, and by the way, you're next to other high-quality brands. That's sort of what we see in the other side. That the flip side of not being everything to everyone means that the other brands who are quite particular also are attracted to our platform as well. Look, there's a good reason why we work with like high-quality airlines that are described as more like, you know, Qatar Airways and Cathay Pacific. I'm an airline nerd by the way. If you take the airlines, they have the best airline products, like top ten. If you look at like the SkyTracks reviews, Cathay Pacific and Qatar are like near the very top. And we're very particular, like, hey, we want a great product for our customers to have. And and and and the flip side is our airline partners want to reach a great set of customers as well, who appreciate that kind of quality product as well. So that's the thing that's for us really important, which is the Yonder promises that we do our very best, and we will continue to promise, that whatever you go to on Yonder and find in Yonder, you will love. Like the quality's great. That's hard to do, but actually over time it creates a place where you get you earn trust with consumers, and that means you can do a lot more with them as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

It still makes me think about the scale issue, Tim. Like how how you manage to maintain that level of quality at a bigger scale. And also, I assume you're making commission from these partners. Um, does that also cause an issue with curation and scale, right? You are generating revenue when when your members Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

We we get current value from the partners.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Again, I fall back to the question of you know, that's gonna cause problems, right, along the road when you know you want to try to grow the business, grow the balance sheet, um, bring on more partners, have you know things that people want to purchase, the peop brands that people want to spend with. You think that this is a sustainable business model, even at a scale? I mean, I don't think you're trying are you trying to get to 50 million customers as well? And is that going to be feasible?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

For us, I would rather be five million customers, but being much deeper with five million than 50 million. And that's the that's the key difference. Uh I obviously won't share sort of commercial information here, but the LTV of our customers looks very different than a revolution customer.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, I can see that because I was one.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

The depth of engagement we get is much deeper, but the the amount of revenue we generate per customer is much deeper, and the LTV is much different as well. So that's and again, a choice. Um you can't get those high LTVs if you're instead of a 50 million customer. That's okay. Like we're not trying to play that game, we're trying a different game. The key question is if you're a any brand, airline, restaurant, direct-to-consumer store, hotel, you need to spend money and you need to grow your business. And where are they spending that money right now? Meta or Google. And they're spending a lot of money there. So, really, if you think about it, it's like where why would they keep having money to spend? It's because they they need ultimately every company has sales and marketing money that they are spending to acquire customers. That is money they continue to spend. What we provide for partners is a way to drive customer value, member value, as well as partner value, because we might find a new customer discovers them, they might spend a bit more, they might go again. So, you know, you gotta think about it as like every business is spending money to grow at some point. What we're really saying is like spend money with us, we'll help you grow, and you co-invest in that, and you pay for outcomes like any other um ads platform as well. And so that's a really important part of that. Give you a sense of like the size of that, it's a pretty big market. Um, just have a look at Google and Meta's uh revenue streams.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

It's it's pretty chunky. So with Yonda not being for everyone, uh, where do you actually see the ceiling? I'd be curious. Um, is there is there like a um a number? I mean, you probably have invest you have investors as well. You probably that question came up uh at least once. What's a percentage of society that actually enjoys these finer things in life?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Yeah, I would say that we're probably um I mean, this is obviously not scientific, but we we sort of generally size it about it's like 10-15% of the market is probably like the ideal fit for Yonder. Um and by the way, they're not all rich. We've got actually quite a lot of students now on the debit card who l like to go out for theatre. They like to go out to Burger Beyond, right? And so they fit their behaviour, but they're not yet rich. But that's okay. Because remember, we never said yonder's a rich person's card, we said it's an aspirational lifestyle product. What do a lot of uni students do is they go out and eat, they go out to bars, they go out and you know, go out to theatre, they go get burgers. So yeah, they're probably less likely to go to our Michigan star partners. But you know, people often think, oh, all your partners are expensive. I'm like, you know, burger and beyond is a 10-15 pound meal. That's not expensive. A theatre ticket with Yonder, 10 or 20 pounds, 30 pounds. So so we do have a much wider range. We do have the really high and expensive places, but we also have the Japanese varmen shop that's 15 pounds for ramen. So for us, that's a really important distinction as well. What we're not trying to be a Soho House where it's exclusive, you know, you can only be part of it if you're part of the club. Um, and by the way, this is only good for you if you're ultra-rich. Like, no, no, no, that's not that that is never the goal of Yonder. What the goal is is like people who like to go and explore and try things, that's for you. That's for you, that's your Yonda outside. And that could be a 19-year-old. In fact, I had a custom interview with an 18 or 19-year-old. Her mum signed up for the you know, the subscription credit card, she signed up for the free debit card, she gets her mum to earn points, her mum sends her the points. She uses her points for theatre, for you know, arcade food hall, for one of the more casual places. She's said to me, I'm like, I'm not saving up for these big things. I love the free coffee, I love to do this. I mean, when I was a uni student, I still went out. I mean, I'm sure when you guys are, you know, you were younger as well, you still went and went to bars, you still went out to theatre, you still went out to watch football, you still went out to go for dinner. You probably weren't dropping 300 pounds at night, but you were still spending money. And so for us, that's a really important distinction, is that um it's not a rich person's product, it's a it's a really about discovery and aspiration, not necessarily.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

It's interesting that you raise students or younger people using these because you I, as far as I understand, you're using open bank banking to help basically lend to people. Like legacy wouldn't necessarily do this, but you're using it to lend to people with thin files. Um give people access, essentially. Yonder makes credit look cool, I I would say. It makes it kind of look like a lifestyle accessory, and that's obviously fine. But I think there is also a fine line between financial inclusion and just glamorizing debt. Um, also to a generation of people that are under pressure from a cost of living crisis. So I I I wonder how do you make sure that Yonder doesn't just become like a pretty version of a debt trap? Because a lot of people that might be using it don't fully understand that behind a credit card lies a 30% plus APR.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah it's it's a good question. I think a lot about it and I think the most important thing is uh I you know I always joke that rich people call it leverage other people call it debt and and why is that and I think it's actually people's relationship with it that every single person is taking some form of debt. You know if you're paying lease on a rental property you're paying debt. You're just paying it to someone else. If you take a student loan you're paying debt. So so I think the the fallacy is to go the right answer is to run away from it. Because let's be honest who who in the world out here is buying a house without a mortgage like everyone is taking some form of debt in the future nearly everyone's taking some sort of student loan. Nearly everyone has some sort of liquidity we need from time to time. What's really important to us is it's not good or bad. It's a tool and should be treated as such. I use the analogy that uh that credit is like fire. Fire is one of the most important things combustion cooking heating I mean nearly everything requires some sort of combustion and fire. And yet at the same time fire can cause damage it can burn you it can, you know, cause a lot of sort of distress. Does that mean you should get rid of fire? Well no you can't get rid of fire. It's a tool and so for us what's really important is when customers use the credit, they understand it's boring. It is not free money. And that's the criticist what we've found in general is people who think about credit as free money, that is a bad like way to think about credit. When you think about credit as what I'm doing is I'm getting money ahead of time. I'm getting it early therefore I'm paying a fee on that and therefore I need to have make sure I'm making the right decision when I do that as well. And we make there's also small things that we've done in the product for example when you choose to borrow we actually tell you how much your interest will cost you in pound figures. Because let's be honest no one knows how to convert an APR into an actual cost of borrowing. Like the maths is so complicated. So we do the maths for you in fact we have a little slider that says you're paying x plus x pounds of your bill that equates to x pounds of interest and the and the dialogue goes orange. Like in a small thing it goes from green to orange and if you pay the minimum payment it goes to red. And these are like really small design choices we made because we're like hey we want to think about you are borrowing money now and there's an interest charge of three pounds next month. Do you want to go and do that? If yes go and do that. That's completely fine. So for us what we really want to make sure is people are making informed choices but not running from it either because you will at some point need to access credit whether it's for a big purchase, a small purchase, or whether it's even building a credit score as well. And what is true is that for a lot of young people one of the big priorities for them is starting to build their credit score in their 20s. So when they apply for mortgage in their 30s they have a thick credit file as well. So actually we see some of our customers saying to us hey I'll take the debit I might take the credit but I'll take a small credit line in fact what's unique about Yonder is you could take a small credit line of 100 pounds but you could top it up like a debit card. So you still get the top up benefits which is why we have a linked bank account you could top it up like a debit card get all the benefits of building a credit history but never borrow on it. You just top it up pay it down top it up pay it down spend top it up spend it down it means you could essentially use it in debit the whole time but get the benefits of section 75, the credit score building things like that. And that was an intentional why we built that as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

I actually really appreciate the fact that you've got a debit card now from the sense of just getting the barrier of entry just as reducing because I would recommend Yonder to uh to people you know for for a number of reasons. I mean the app is fantastic the curation is great it's just it is a beautiful place to to to to shop essentially or to look for rewards. But also from like a travel spending perspective it's one of the best rewards card for spending internationally because Amex is charging 3% you know you have certain you know you can get Mastercards exchange rates with a debit card and some credit cards but Yonder is a really solid way to earn points on international transactions. And so I would want to recommend it but also the credit card was a bit of a barrier of entry. People are frightened for to get rejected it might impact their credit score. Having the debit card is yeah is good because it gives people the opportunity to get a taste of Yonder. Cities just quickly any new cities coming up I know the Netherlands and Europe but what about the UK?

SPEAKER_00 26:01

We've already just recently launched a Netherlands and we're doing some early beta testing. So technically that's already happened first uh but but we're definitely looking at doing more cities to be honest the one of the things we look for is enough density of things to do as well because we want to keep it fresh. I don't want to have a city open and then have like the same eight things there for two for two years straight. It's not very interesting. So we do want to keep it fresh but we've also got some of our partners interestingly enough again this is why I can't say too much actually are expanding on their side and so we talk about a lot on how do we work with them to launch their brand into new cities as well. And that's again probably talks to a bit of the symbiotic relationship we have with the brands as well in that we work with them to help them grow their business as they start to expand their footprint. That just doesn't happen when they work with some of these large platform players which is just really like everything to everyone. With us they're like you you talk about it in the way that we want to partner with you as we launch into new cities as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Okay Tim well thank you very much for your time it's uh it's been fun talking to you today. I think if anybody's watching or listening to this and they have any questions that they would like to push towards Tim pop them in the comment section. I'm sure yourself will read them or someone from your team will read them and we'll try and get some responses out there. But thank you again for your time. Like guys thanks so much Times Tim I don't know necessarily if they're trying to replace Revolute Jan it sounds more like they're just trying to appeal to an audience that are just like looking for like you always say the finer things in life. Jan before this call kept saying I'm a yonder customer because I like the finer things in life which isn't necessarily true. And Jan is the opposite and is more of a would you say you're more of a Revolute customer then because you just like Perplexity Pro?

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah I'm a super rational person.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

I'm someone who doesn't go out much I'm someone who uh doesn't um that doesn't mean I'm not a rational because I like nice gin.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Uh that's no Johnny that's that's that's not what what I want to say but uh you you have interest in these these um not sure if luxury goods is the the right word but you'd you'd go ahead and buy chili oil on Yonder uh or fro through yonder uh from a from a retailer um you'd you you'd consider buying an expensive jacket that costs potentially 300 pounds those are things I wouldn't do and I believe there is a lot of people out there that are just like me and uh yeah I'm sure there are also some that are just like you but it from what it's uh what it sounded to me is that um yonder is clearly uh trying to appear to the the journeys of the society and uh um really not interested in in tapping into this general market so the the um comparison to Revolute is totally obsolete yeah I think he put that to bed pretty swiftly I would have liked a little bit more insight into what cities that we can expect in the future absolutely would have loved that because that's what people that's what people talk about people talk about yonder feeling like a London only app which isn't true you've got Bath Bristol Manchester but um where's Leeds?

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Where's Glasgow?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Yeah but the majority of the experiences are in London right if you wanna want to go out um it's it's mostly if you want to enjoy these local experiences um it's probably gonna be somewhere around London and if you're not in London you're gonna have a a limited experience let's call it like that.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Generally though like I think Yonder is a very good product. Like I have certain problems with the fair usage policy so you can only redeem a certain amount of Yonder points depending off if you're on premium or free. I would like to be able to spend my points how I wish and as a result of that you can end up with a bit of a mismatch of points. Like when I finished using Yonder I was left with points that I couldn't really use and I I I just wanted to close the account. Besides that Jan it fantastic travel card for earning rewards like no fixed fees on transactions. Yeah you get Mastercards exchange rates and you get Yonder points so you know you can sign up for Yonder premium pay for your hotel on the credit card or on the debit card get four Yonder points or five Yonder points per pound so you're gonna get a load of points. You're also gonna get your travel insurance as long as you are paying for the hotel or transport costs with the card. So there's a bit of a gotcha there. He didn't mention that interestingly when we were talking about the travel insurance Yan but I think that's an important nuance because Revolute makes you pay 75% of the transport and accommodation costs to qualify for the insurance. Yonder as far as I believe it's the full transport cost or the full accommodation cost. Okay but that travel insurance is solid Yan. So you can get that you can get some great you can earn some great points and also by paying for your hotel it's probably going to cost more than a thousand pounds you're gonna get that welcome bonus of 10,000 points. That's what I did when I first signed up for that Yonder credit card. I got the premium one and I went on holiday with it, paid for the hotel, got the welcome bonus and ended up getting quite a lot of points.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yeah bet and you went ahead and bought chili oil right Johnny I mean I I I see I I get it. For people like you it's great. It's a great card. For me personally not sure I'd see a fit um I'd I I'd probably go ahead and uh and prefer some some simple cashback card um instead of Yonda um but I I I mean I appreciate that there are people like you um out there that for for them yonda is probably exactly right. One thing I find personally dangerous and you've you've quickly touched on it in the interview was the fact that um Yonda is obviously trying to appeal to this this young audience of people that are you know going out regularly um that really really enjoy their life. Yeah and then the debt question right Tim said they're doing a lot to educate these people but um we also know that yeah even educated people make bad decisions all the time actually so many people do that um people are not uh not able to to control the actions in many cases especially when it comes to finances um and I mean yeah it's a bit it's a bit of a dangerous topic.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

We'd be curious to hear from those that are listening or watching this what do you make of the Yonder card? Firstly have you used it before how did how was your experience using it? Was it similar to mine where there were times in which you found like you know redeeming to be quite challenging because there was nothing you wanted and also were there times when you discovered brands that were actually quite exciting and new and that were genuinely beneficial to your life like I found some fantastic gin got a bit drunk on it and enjoyed the flavor. Like that was nice. Honestly that was nice my wife and I had a nice time with some gin. Maybe I'm sharing too much information. But you know what do you make of the on the card? What do you think? Be nice to hear from people in the comments and as as well Jan what do people think of this style of episode? Slightly longer free flowing conversation with someone else I thought that was quite interesting right yeah I had a good time.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

I I'd be curious as well. Please write into the comments it's been a pleasure as always