Cushion

Business model

Consumer app that analyzed users' bank transactions to identify unnecessary fees and negotiated refunds, taking a commission only on returned funds; later described itself as "Plaid for BNPL".

In brief

Built a genuinely consumer-aligned business model, only earning money when it successfully got a fee refunded for its users, then pivoted toward providing infrastructure for other companies building buy-now-pay-later products. Despite eight years of iterating across multiple fint…

See the What Happened tab for the full account.