If there's an annual fee, most customers expect either excellent rewards or top-tier customer service (e.g. amex). Hard to justify $50/yr for neither of these.
As for customer service, we believe you can't tout that as differentiator, you just have to do a great job and your customers will speak for you. Amex did a great job over last 50 years, but is struggling to be relevant in this day and age (http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/)
We agree there's nothing better than exceptional customer service and experience. We've built Final from the ground up as a new credit card issuer so that we can continue to enhance the technology, service, and experience. We need to make money somehow, and we think an annual fee is the best way to align with our customers.
We've spent 3 years to get to this point. We're now live and actively inviting people from our waitlist to apply for a card.
We talk to our customers often and ask them what they think about us. We will continue building and making it better. Here's what we've heard:
"The few people I’ve showed your service to so far have said “this is what we should have had all along” and I agree."
"Final just solved my XM radio problem. I've been trying to cancel XM for a year. Each month I dispute their charges, Amex credits my money back.. but Amex would never just BAN them from charging me. Generated new final number, added to XM, then froze account. Boom."
"Final is one of the best banking products I've ever used. You guys could have sat back on your haunches and only delivered the cool feature of generating cards, but the well-designed phone app, the card, and your great customer service make every other card I have in my wallet pale in comparison. I reach for the final card to make daily payments not because of rewards points, but because I see the receipt immediately and I'm able to instantly dispute the charge if necessary. I don't know if there's such thing as 'credit card anxiety', but something about that gives me so much peace-of-mind. Thank you for creating a great product!"
And our favorite: "You guys fking killed the UX experience. The site is a pleasure to use."
> The site is a pleasure to use.
Nav bar at the top reorders, or shifts width, or something - so I clicked something else instead 'FAQ' a couple of times; each time I had to wait several seconds while the navigation faded in...
Appreciate the thorough response. I definitely think you guys have a unique value proposition. I still wonder if it's enough to justify switching costs for a large enough # of customers (e.g. re-setup bill pays, stored cards on accts, etc) for one truly differentiating feature, but wish you guys best of luck with your launch!