An unexpected pattern that emerged from using Fold, both for me and several others I know, was the prompt decision to switch our primary bank accounts to those more compatible with the Account Aggregator ecosystem and, subsequently, with Fold.
It was a revelation to realize that what we are building can influence a daily habit.
A couple of months after our initial announcement, and after many many requests, we introduced Credit Cards on Fold. You can link your credit cards, see their transactions, due dates, due amounts, etc. However, until our recent releases, all of this was happening in isolation. Credit card transactions were siloed within their own views, not impacting other areas like Cash Flow and Spending Summary.
Consolidating transactions from various sources and shaping them to fit a single schema was an engineering achievement (expect a detailed blog post soon). But now we’ve accomplished it! And we’ve inevitably set the stage for a habit-changing feature?
With the latest Android and iOS updates, transactions made via your connected credit cards appear alongside your bank transactions. They also affect your cash flow and spending summary. One of the caveats with the current Account Aggregator architecture is the limit on the number of refreshes, currently once every 12 hours, and possibly once every 24 hours in the future.
But that’s only for bank transactions.
Credit card transactions appear in real-time, as you spend. Just a few seconds after swiping your credit card or scanning a Rupay UPI QR code, you can organize your transaction, tag it, and add a receipt without waiting for a bank account sync to occur.
The ‘Pain of Separation’ was a significant concern for us, as our app and all of us advocate for better financial well-being. Encouraging the use of credit cards felt like a step backward. When you spend with your credit cards, the money in your bank account doesn’t decrease in real time, so you don’t feel the pain of separation from your money and can end up overspending.
With the introduction of a small new feature, we’ve addressed that issue as well. A new setting in the Balance widget allows you to augment your bank balance with your total credit card outstanding. Your total balance is shown after subtracting the amount spent using your credit cards. This reintroduces the pain of separation and curbs overspending.
Personally speaking, I have observed another change in my habits recently, I find myself doing more and more transactions through my credit cards. Because it’s real-time, both in the way that transactions become visible in Fold and in the way the that I can see my savings get chipped away as I spend.
If you have credit cards, connect them to Fold, update your app, and tell us if this isn’t a life-changing experience!
Up next, we plan to expand support for more credit cards, including add-on cards and cards with shared limits. We’ve come a long way from where we started, and we have never been more excited about where we’re headed.