Accrue

Instead of providing customers with credit to make purchases, Accrue is partnering with retailers to support savings behavior. Users set goals to purchase from Accrue partners. Meanwhile, those partners contribute to the purchase when a customer hits certain milestones.

At the moment, Accrue largely makes money at the point of purchase, through card interchange fees. However, to bring in serious revenue they will need to raise performance fees from merchants, which in turn requires demonstrating high order values for merchants. Accrue’s next steps are to expand retail partnerships and add employees across all departments, including engineering, sales, and marketing.