You understand that the "rewards" you get when you use a credit card are somehow paid for by you yourself, in spades? Visa posted a profit of $1.6 BILLION for the first QUARTER of this year. That's your reward, right there, watching them make their oligopoly profits off of you.

I meet founders quite often who think they can get their customers to use their product because it is a better deal for the customer. Unfortunately, many of these ideas are not viable because of the way many people focus on short-term gains rather than all-in, lifetime cost. It's too bad that many (most?) people would rather have some immediate gratification from a company that intends to screw them at the first opportunity than a long-term better proposition from a company that is trying to help them.

A great example with Simple is when people say they're sticking with their higher-interest account at a traditional bank. While finding the highest interest rate may appeal to their competitive instinct, the extra 0.5% or so on an average balance of even a couple thousand dollars does not even begin to make up for the surprise fees the bank charges when that person makes a mistake. The usual rebuttal is "Well, I don't make mistakes." The revenue split between fees and net interest margins at the retail banks shows that this is just not true, on average. The argument, then, must be that YOU don't make mistakes because you're better than everyone else. That's just an unattractive attitude.

Someone should build some wearable tech that whenever you make an irrational decision, it beeps angrily at you.

</rant>