Inception

We first started Emblem by building a platform that allowed Creators to issue custom debit cards to their fans, where communities become cardholders. After partnering up with a BaaS provider and our first Creator partner, we launched the first-ever Creator Mastercard debit card. The card allowed fans (now cardholders) to earn cash back and points when they shopped at any of the Creators' partnered brands.

Pivot

After launching the first Creator debit card and running a private beta with 100 fans, we quickly realized that this model wasn't scalable. We decided that instead of fighting for wallet share, we could leverage our Rewards Infrastructure and layer them on top of fans' existing debit and credit cards. We partnered up with Fidel API, Mastercard, and Visa to allow Creators to launch card-linked rewards programs for their fans. This allowed fans to link their existing Mastercard or Visa debit/cards to a Creator's Rewards Program and then earn points and cash back when they make purchases (basically supercharging their existing cards). We powered all of the rewards through Creators' brand partnerships, affiliate networks, and card-linked offers (CLOs). We used transaction data (in real-time) from Visa and Mastercard at the time of purchase (or Auth) to send through our Rewards Infrastructure and notify users right away of their rewards whether it was earning 150 pts after buying a coffee from Starbucks or earning an extra 3% cash back on the Amazon purchase they just made.

My Work (Frontend)

• Designed entire UI/UX for iOS app

• Solely engineered the entire iOS app using Swift and UIKit

• Built entire flow enabling customers to go through KYC, provide PII data, create a checking account, activate a Creator Mastercard debit card linked to that account, and fund their account using bank information collected via Plaid

• Integrated "Add to Wallet" Apple Wallet Provisioning functionality to allow users to easily add the virtual version of their Creator Mastercard debit card to their Apple Wallet

• Integrated Card-Linking feature using Fidel API's iOS SDK that allowed users to link their existing Visa and Mastercard debit/credit cards

My Work (Backend)

• Solely engineered entire backend in Python using Flask

• Built and deployed the AWS infrastructure

  • EC2

  • RDS (MySQL DB)

  • ELB (load-balancers)

• DB models/architecture

• API design and implementation

• Created Rewards Infrastructure to handle stream of transaction data

  • Compatible with transaction data from:

    • Mastercard

    • Visa

    • Plaid

    • Stripe

    • and more

• Maintained webhooks that ingested transaction data in real-time