SelfScore now offers credit card for international students with a much higher credit limit.
Contrary to the popular belief in countries such as India, the American society is not completely cashless and they still prefer to pay in cash at some point. But it’s highly unlikely that they carry enough cash in their hand to pay for everything and anything.
Starting from the student community to the billionaires, Americans tend to carry a credit card within the wallet and it comes handy when they buy things online or even while paying a cabbie.
Unfortunately, a large segment of the student community is deprived of the benefits of using credit cards – the international students studying in US colleges.
According to a Voice of America news article, international students at times come out of banks with a heavy heart as they are denied credit cards for not having a social security number or various other indicators that marks their eligibility.
Indian American Kalpesh Kapadia had to go through this agonizing experience of having to live without a credit card when he came to the US 20 years ago as an International student. After his MBA, Kapadia became the top analyst/investors in Wall Street’s tech sector.
Now, as CEO & Co-Founder of a Silicon Valley company named Selfscore, Kapadia wants to do what exactly the banks failed when he came to the US for his studies – ease the challenges for this deserving but underserved student population.
Over the period of one year, over 10,000 international students from 66 countries have been provided with MasterCards issued by SelfScore without any credit history or deposit required.
On Tuesday, it rolled out SelfScore Achieve MasterCard, a credit card for international students with a much higher credit limit, cash-back rewards and an introductory annual percentage rate of 0% on purchases.
“Funding sources matter,†Kapadia said in a news statement on Tuesday. “You have demonstrated that to the university and to the embassy overseas. We are piggybacking on that.â€
According to Kapadia, his firm will do away with the existing FICO score to find the eligibility of the credit card holder and instead use the company’s proprietary scoring system.
Currently, there are close to one million international students studying in the US under F and M visas. SelfScore aims at helping these women and men access proper US credit and establish their credit history while they study.
According to SelfScore, it has approved credit cards for 25 percent of students who applied since last March. Kapadia said less than one percent of these students are late on making the monthly payments.
The first credit card offered by SelfScore called Classic MasterCard offered an initial credit limit of not more than $500 and this can be increased to $1,500 after the cardholder makes some visible transactions and payments.
The new SelfScore Achieve Mastercard offers credit limits of up to $5,000 with no annual fee or foreign transaction fee. It also offers unlimited cash back rewards of one percent on all purchases with an introductory APR of zero percent.
Kapadia said it’s an attractive market for SelfScore. “Someone who comes here [from] 10,000 miles away to make their life better through education. This is a highly-motivated population,†he added.