A New Credit Card That Rewards Wellness | EP 322 | The Hustle Daily Show

Key Takeaways

today we're going to talk about a company that is trying to incentivize Wellness through credit card reward points [Music] [Applause] we're going to talk about a company that wants to reward people for making healthy purchases so I have a credit card that I feel like rewards me for doing generally like unhealthy or at least unwise thing I tend to get more points when I go and eat out or drink I get like 10 x points for taking a lift instead of you know maybe walking somewhere or taking public transit and like there's like a really good deal that they give me with doordash which just incentivizes me to also like order in like all this like unhealthy food so Juliet that seems to be like what credit cards have been doing for as long as there's been these reward systems but it seems like there's something new on the horizon that's trying to incentivize health or at least Wellness I should say what's this company and what's it doing so this company is called Ness it is a new credit card company it comes from Derek Flynn's Reich he's the CEO and founder you may know him because he previously founded greatest in 2011 which is this health and wellness media platform where you can go and read articles that has since been sold to Healthline so this is his new company he's got a long career in health and wellness and basically yes the nest card there's only one right now but it rewards you for healthy purchases with points that you can in turn spend on other healthy things and it's it's backed by MasterCard yeah so it runs on the MasterCard Network so as they say you can use it anywhere MasterCard is accepted now this first one is probably not for everybody it's a charge card so there's an annual fee of about 350 no interest you just pay your balance down every month so whatever you're putting on this card you need to be prepared to pay at the end of the month so it's a little different from your standard credit card and how it works is every time you make a healthy purchase you're gonna get five times points so instead of Lyft or doordash you're getting it for these healthy purchases and then fewer points elsewhere so then those points can be redeemed within their Marketplace which consists of over 60 vendors and there are all sorts of different places this like sweet green where you can get a salad won't be Parker where you can get a pair of glasses the most splurgiest of them I think is probably the Canyon Ranch Wellness Retreat you have to have a lot of points to go on this Wellness retreat but those are the kind of things that you would do you would make your Healthy purchases and then you can use your points on other healthy purchases right right okay so so to be clear then like you said buy healthy things and then you have to use your points on healthy things you can't go and use them on a you know a burger at Shake Shack or something like that or a you know some Luxe trip to Hawaii necessarily yeah I mean you can use it at Chipotle which you know some people might not think is as healthy as sweet green but their definition of Health and Wellness is really interesting so when I was talking to to Derek his idea with greatest was really to make health and wellness more accessible to the average person so not people who are already super ripped bodybuilders not people who can take every group recommendation because they have a bunch of money to spend on all of these things yeah yes yes like the average person who's just like hey I I want to incorporate more health and wellness into my life and this credit card company kind of works in the same way where health and wellness just isn't eat these superfoods go to the gym look very hot all of the time it's more of an internal and external perception of Wellness yeah so yeah so what what kind of definitions did he examples I guess did he give you for that version of of Wellness or or quote unquote healthy okay so obviously gyms and health healthy food yes but also salons Spas therapy Health Care Health Insurance groceries pharmacies anything that kind of has this holistic health thing going on that we're all into today like I feel like this is and Derek was saying this is like a big growing Trend and I think we see that especially among younger people Millennials gen Z it's not enough to just go to 24 Hour Fitness and get super ripped and then maybe have a protein shake like you're meditating you're doing things to make sure that you can sleep a full eight hours a night you're getting big water bottles so you can get in the amount of water you're supposed to drink every day you're really thinking about health and wellness from like not just do I have six-pack abs but like do I feel good every day am I happy am I doing my best yeah this is a huge industry right I mean like you were saying we have we think about this in in so many different ways and so much more often than we did you know just a few years ago and certainly compared to like a couple decades ago but it still seems like there's a barrier to end country to Wellness and this card for instance you know it comes with a 349 annual fee like you were talking about earlier so are there any ways that they're able to kind of get people into the fold who are already kind of being blocked out by some of these expensive Wellness things right I think this card in particular is definitely for a certain kind of person for whom a 350 annual fee doesn't mean that much I mean when you when you look at the rewards points and how they break down if you're somebody who goes to sweetgreen like five days a week because that's by your office you essentially get your fifth and 10th salad of the month free if that's how you choose to use your points yeah so this is for somebody who's already making this right you're already making these expenditures and you you have the money where it's no sweat but there are future products coming he said the first one is going to be a charge card with a cheaper annual fee of about 99 and then in the future they may do revolving cards similar to the kind of cards most of us have where you you have interests and he also was talking about integration with hsas and fsas and that's that's health health savings accounts and you mean right yeah so that I think is probably the most interesting part is if there's a way to make Health Care in the United States more accessible that would be that would be pretty interesting to me obviously we know that eating healthy and working out and getting a good night's sleep and drinking enough water these are all the things that you can be doing to try to prevent having to go to the doctor your apple a day as it were but obviously some of these medical expenses are unavoidable and I'm not seeing a whole lot of products that I personally like or trust in that space I I know you can get a Care Credit Card if you have medical expenses you can't pay but I find I personally don't care for Care Credit you certainly don't get any points for it so the potential with those future plans potentially involving hsas fsas I mean does that mean that people when they have to pay for Health Care could get reward points out of it yeah I think the details on that are are not fully announced yet but I think that is the idea I mean if you there is like a reward system for so many of the things we do every time you fly with Delta and you have an Amex Delta card you get points for flying with Delta I think that would be the same idea like right now with the card that they have let's say you go to your dentist and you get a root canal and your root canal is I don't know six hundred dollars you will get 600 worth of points for that root canal because you're doing something healthy however you will need to pay that off at the end of the month and that's not accessible for most people but I think with these future cards there will be something where it's like okay I have this big medical expenditure I can't pay it off all at once and I'm gonna be rewarded for going to the doctor and not letting my tooth rot out of my head but those are some of the things that I think we'll see from this card company in the future if if Nest is successful if what they're trying to do okay and then one final thing Ness you know I get it because of Wellness but there's a couple of other interesting times just with the name of this credit card company yes so Jonathan Van Ness of queer eye Fame is an investor and also the company's Chief self-care officer he does a lot of work in that space like feeling good you know he's kind of like the perfect guy for something like this his name is Van Ness of course that has nothing to do with the credit card company the name they already had the name to begin with Derek is a big fan of him so that just happened to work out coincidentally they have a publication where it's kind of like a wire cutter with like health and wellness products like what's the best foam roller where they try out all the foam rollers and determine which one you should buy that blog is called Nessie which is what people the nickname for the lockers monster so yeah that's cute yeah who doesn't love the Loch Ness monster I mean great great branding in that case Okay Julian well thank you very much that's gonna do it for us today thank you everybody for tuning in to the hustle Daily Show we're a proud part of the HubSpot podcast Network we've got a lot more second business and coverage in our newsletter so if you're not subscribed you can get end up at the hustle.co email we will catch you next week [Applause]