Request for Startup: Visa just created a loophole to exploit credit card rewards

Remember Curve? The card product in the UK/EU that sits at the top of your wallet and intelligently routes each transaction to an underlying credit card that maximizes your rewards. It's an idea that thousands of payment nerds and consumers alike have had — one card to rule them all — automatically get 5% cashback on groceries through your AAA card, 10x points on travel through your Chase card, and 1x on rent through your Bilt card.

There's a reason that idea hasn't taken off stateside, and it's simply that the powers that be couldn't (or, wouldn't) allow for it.

The large card issuers' entire rewards economics depend on cardholder laziness. They can offer 3x points on flights or 5x on rideshares because most people don't optimize every purchase… they're banking on the fact that you also reliably use the same card on transactions that earn them plenty of interchange while paying you 1x points. But if everyone becomes a points maximizer overnight without having to use a brain cell, those generous reward categories become unsustainable.

The card networks know that major issuers like Chase, Citi, and CapitalOne would revolt if cardholders were able to programmatically game their carefully structured cashback and rewards programs. So they've designed an intricate set of technical limitations and rules such as "No credit on credit funding" to block this type of thing.

And so the Curve 2.0 graveyard in the US is overflowing. Every quarter or so, a new crop of prospectors goes digging only to reach the same end. We saw some noble attempts most recently after Visa's Flex Credential (VFC) announcement. But sure enough, Visa explicitly prohibited cross-issuer routing in the fine print, see Section 2.3 of their Issuer Participation Guide.

💡 But here's the thing — this time really is different. In the race to innovate in agentic payments, Visa just handed over the keys with Visa Intelligent Commerce.

VIC provides the tokenization framework and infrastructure to provision network tokens that point to any underlying cards/funding PANs (FPANs). The idea is to let AI agents shop on your behalf using your credit card. Seems innocent enough – you tell your agent to book a flight, so it calls VIC and creates an encrypted network token, which it uses to checkout on United, and then the transaction routes to your Chase card behind the scenes; the transaction posts as per usual on your card statement.

Except... what's stopping that agent from becoming a rewards optimizer?

🏆 There's a greenfield right now for a consumer-facing agentic payments startup that leverages Visa Intelligent Commerce to automate cashback and rewards optimization.

Picture this: As a consumer, you log into a dashboard where you connect all your credit cards. The AI agent has already read the cardholder agreements — fees, point categories, initial bonus periods. You also feed it your personal preferences, "hit the minimum spend to qualify for my Citi bonus", or "use Chase for risky transactions because I trust their customer service."

Now every transaction becomes perfectly optimized. The agent knows exactly which card to tokenize to complete a purchase. If you can help a consumer double their rewards, you can easily earn a slice of the upside.

If you're building in this space, DM me.