Patrick Fergus
@Fergus5Fergus
Fintech, short for financial technology, has been a surging market worldwide, and students at Springfield College are not missing out on the industry’s next great innovations.
Four students are aiming to level the playing field by providing credit benefits through their startup program, Smart Credit. The developing app will provide AI-powered recommendations and alerts for credit card users, based on the location of stores that offer specific offers. The program instantly and effortlessly recommends which credit card to use for any purchase, with an intelligent location tracking system and AI-powered recommendation engine to identify the maximum cashback for its users.
“Millions of people are using credit cards, and then we did the research about it, [it’s] a massive need for the American people,” said Meraj Husen, the Chief Operating Officer for SmartCredit.
Husen is a part of a larger team at SmartCredit. He’s joined by co-founder Camilly Shrestha and Dikshya Upadhyaya, who heads up marketing for the group. The startup has been over a year in the making, and Husen says it spawned from a clear lack of these types of services in the market.
“I’ve spent two years in the United States and had not heard of a good product like this,” said Husen. “Their UI, like their front end, is so hard to navigate.”
Shrestha has been in charge of the coding development of the startup, and regularly spends hours working to ensure it can perform its intended purpose.
“You never know how your program will work on a live server. So figuring out what actually works is very hard for me,” said Shrestha. “I’ve never worked with a team in this kind of development program or development project, [figuring out] what features I should distribute to a member, but this one year of experience has taught me how to work with a team.”
Upadhyaya joined the team last September, and has embraced the demand of getting out word on a new startup idea, and procuring funding. She has previous experience in marketing for college admissions offices, but nothing quite like this.
“It’s very different, in a sense, because you’re marketing something that’s not really tangible,” Upadhyaya said. “[It’s] something that people can’t really see, because our app is still in progress, and it’s a new challenge in itself.”
Since last spring, the team has gone through pitch meetings, advanced SmartCredit to a prototype stage through a six-week incubator over the summer, and just last fall, held a demo day for potential investors. The demo and pitch received great feedback, and had some interest in funding the startup.
“I’m proud of the people, my co-founders, who are here and making me grow every microsecond,” said Husen.
Their uniqueness extends beyond just the idea, but their makeup. All three are international students, hailing from Nepal.
“We can talk about what we love to eat, and our culture, like what festivals are going on…so we share values that make us closer,” said Shrestha.
“I want to give a special shout out to them,” said Upadhyaya. “They want me to be a better, hard working and [a] passionate person every day. Having that privilege to bring Nepali community and to reflect that…it adds another layer to our story.”
The next step is clear: make it into a customer-ready product. Through raising capital from investors and venture capitalists, the goal is to continue Smart Credit’s growth and presence in the desired customer base. The Tech Accelerator Program is something that the group is hoping to get into, which is highly focused on refining products and gaining customers.
As unicorns, or the startups with a value of over a billion dollars, the group at Smart Credit hope to achieve such status, and help users maximize their financial awards through smarter credit usage.
Photo by Patrick Fergus