Atlas increases average customer value by 163% with Kard

Background

The Atlas Rewards Credit Card is a product designed for consumers who have little to no credit history. With Atlas’s proprietary underwriting process, new cardholders get approved in minutes, and receive a custom safe spending limit that grows with time and usage.

Plus, Atlas offers 0% APR, making it easier for cardholders to build their credit. The average Atlas user improves their credit score by 50 points within the first year of activating their card. While access to credit and building credit are huge advantages to Atlas cardholders, rewards are another big draw.

Getting cash back at popular merchants is a compelling reason to sign up for Atlas. But it’s also a way to push existing cardholders into using their Atlas card more — and building up their credit in the process. By partnering with Kard, a flexible, performance-based rewards platform, Atlas could open the door to a whole new suite of rewards to attract and retain its target audience.

Goals

What originally attracted Atlas to Kard were:

1. Kard’s merchant network, including brands like CVS, Dell, TurboTax, TicketSmarter, and Sunoco.
2. Kard’s scalable, API-driven approach that could integrate directly with the Atlas banking ecosystem.
3. Kard’s product roadmap, focused on rewarding consumers in new and innovative ways.

By partnering with Kard, Atlas aimed to:

• Stand out from other starter cards, with a set of new and different merchants with more ways to earn value (and continue increasing their credit score). 
• Increase average order value. The more cash back users get, the more comfortable they feel making larger purchases. And with Atlas’s 0% APR, the easier it is for them to pay it off.
• Improve customer lifetime value. If users know they’ll be rewarded for purchases on an Atlas card, they’ll reach for it more often, increasing transaction frequency over time.

Solution

Since 2022, Atlas worked closely with Kard’s AM team to launch and promote cash back offers, giving cardholders instant access to cash back at thousands of retailers.

Results

8.7x increase in users automatically matching with an offer

At Kard, we measure offer adoption by matched transactions and match rates, where matched transactions are the number of transactions with offers attached, and the match rate is the percentage of users taking advantage of an offer.

Between January 2024 and February 2025, Atlas’s matched transactions grew by a whopping 37x. Match rates skyrocketed, too, growing by nearly 9x. These are a testament to customer interest in the Atlas product and the growing offers from the Kard network.

Overall, Atlas is sitting at a 0.55% match rate for their rewards program, 47% higher than what we typically see with Kard’s customers.

Huge jumps like these happen when offers are extremely well-aligned to cardholder preferences — precisely what Atlas had hoped for with Kard’s ever-expanding network of brandname merchants.

A 163% increase in average customer value

Atlas has see consistent and robust growth  over the past several years. That growth becomes even more impressive when you understand how much more valuable those customers have become with cash back rewards in place.

Atlas users who earn rewards:

• Have a 163% higher average customer value than unrewarded users
• Make 100% more transactions with their Atlas card than unrewarded users.
• Have a 22% higher average order value than Atlas cardholders who have not earned a reward.

Obviously, these changes have positively impacted Atlas’s bottom line. But, perhaps more importantly, they’ve impacted cardholders — whose credit (and spending limits) have increased with every big purchase they are able to pay off.

"From day one, Atlas understood how powerful the right rewards could be. They weren’t just looking to add perks — they were looking to drive meaningful behavior, boost engagement, and stand out in a crowded market. With Kard’s flexible tech and expansive merchant network, we helped make that vision a reality." - Ben Mackinnon, Kard CEO & Founder

44% retention rate increase

It’s clear Atlas users resonate with Kard’s cash back offers: they keep redeeming them.

On average, 62% of users will make a purchase the month after making a non-rewarded transaction. But that number jumps to 89% after they earn their first reward — a 44% increase.

“Our mission has always been to give underserved consumers a fair shot at building and accessing credit to meet their financial goals. Rewards have become a key part of how we increase engagement and improve financial outcomes for our users at the same time, and working with Kard is a big part of our approach.” - Zane Salim, Atlas Co-Founder & CEO

What’s next: unlocking more value with Kard rewards

Piggybacking off of these impressive numbers, the Atlas team is already exploring other ways to reward their customers, such as:

• Leveraging Kard’s newest API, which will help them tailor their rewards look and feel, leverage developer tools like SDKs and code snippets, and launch new types of Kard rewards as soon as they become available.
• Deploy local offers, for more personalized and time-bound rewards that appeal to Atlas’s target customers.
• Other gamified offer formats, like click-to-boost or progression milestones to continue pushing the Atlas card to top of wallet.
• Automated email and push notifications, to make cardholders more aware of the offers available to them (thereby encouraging them to use their Atlas card).

Together with Kard, Atlas is able to deepen customer loyalty and grow cardholder spend — all while providing significant value to its end consumers.