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Micro case studies: The feud over interest rate caps and the murky future of agentic commerce


1) Interest rate caps are great for fintechs, and the product strategy shows it

Trump’s proposed one-year cap on credit card interest rates sent shockwaves through financial markets last week, triggering immediate price declines across major banks and card issuer stocks. While the proposal hasn’t been enacted, it’s already reshaping strategic calculations across the financial sector – and fintech leaders are seizing the moment.

The back story

Credit cards are not enjoying the greatest start to the new year. Last week, Trump proposed a one-year cap on credit card rates, stating that higher rates are negatively impacting consumers.

The announcement has already led to a drop in stocks for major banks and credit card providers. 

Trump’s announcement on rate caps is still just that, an announcement, but if enacted could quickly impact their profitability. 

Meanwhile, fintech CEOs have been quick to chime in on the subject – supporting the President’s move to hem in interest rates: 

“If this is enacted—and that’s a big if, though part of me hopes it is—we would likely see a significant contraction in industry credit card lending. Credit card issuers simply won’t be able to sustain profitability at a 10% rate cap,” said SoFi’s CEO, Anthony Noto, on X. 

Similarly, Klarna’s CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a recent podcast: “In my opinion, [it’s] a very thoughtful and good suggestion from Trump to cut it to 10%. It would have returned maybe $20 billion of that back to US consumers. It’s not uncommon. We’ve seen interest rate regulation in Europe work pretty well.”

On face value, the interest rate caps seem to combat mounting credit card debt, however, it may end up negatively impacting credit availability, specifically for those who need it most: SMBs and less affluent consumers. 

For fintech CEOs, this is a good thing: In a future with interest rate caps, consumers that require access to liquidity but can’t qualify for credit at banks will turn towards fintech products. Affirm and Bilt are waiting to benefit and already making moves. 

The masterplan

In tandem with Trump’s announcement on social media, Bilt came out with three new cards that have a 10% cap on interest rates for one year. The premium Palladium option charges $495 yearly and provides credits worth $400 for hotels plus $200 in points usable at partner merchants. The mid-tier Obsidian card costs $95 annually and includes bonus rewards for dining and groceries. The entry-level card is free and gives cash back along with points on select purchases.


While Bilt chose to align its new credit cards’ announcement with Trump’s statements, Affirm is dipping its toes in a new territory through its partnership with fintech Esusu. The BNPL company will soon allow renters to pay their rents in installments. The offering is yet to be announced formally.

At the same time Affirm has also announced that it will be adding additional capabilities to its underwriting platform, adding data such as account balances and cash flow trends. 

By entering rental payments and improving its underwriting platform, Affirm is making an active effort to be a better underwriter as well as a more widely available source of credit – just as banks foresee challenges in the wake of the Trump interest cap announcement. 

The strategy is deceptively simple: millions of Americans don’t have timely rent payments reported to credit agencies, missing out on a chance to build credit history. Affirm can open doors for this functionality to its already wide user base, while fueling the sophistication of underwriting capabilities through rent data and cashflow insights. All of this will allow the company to capture a bigger chunk of consumer spend, just as consumers are pushed to seek alternative credit sources in the wake of interest rate caps.

2) The future of shopping is agentic… or not?

We have all heard the buzz about how agentic commerce stands to restructure shopping and commerce entirely. However, moves by the biggest players show that the road to this new future is going to be a rocky one. 

The back story

Last year, Amazon sued Perplexity AI over the firm’s AI shopping functionality, stating that Perplexity’s AI agent automates order placement for users, while disguising its activity as human actions. According to Amazon, these actions pose a security threat to consumer data and Amazon’s own user experience, which has been optimized for human users. 

“Rather than be transparent, Perplexity has purposely configured its CometAI software to not identify the Comet AI agent’s activities in the Amazon Store,” Amazon stated in the lawsuit. 

Perplexity on the other hand is calling the lawsuit by Amazon, bullying. The company posted the following on its website:

“Amazon wants to block you from using your own AI assistant to shop on their platform. Here’s what they’re trying to prevent: You ask your Comet Assistant to find and purchase something on Amazon. If you’re logged in to Amazon (credentials in Comet are stored securely only in your device, never on Perplexity’s servers), the Comet Assistant quickly finds and purchases the item for you, saving you time for more important tasks. Or, you can ask it to compare options and purchase the best one for your needs. Comet users love this experience.”

Amazon stated in a reponse that it is less worried about loss of advertising share and more concerned that users will miss out on options to find cheaper products and delivery options, which ultimately will impact its reputation. 

The plot thickens

It is worth noting that amidst this clash with Perplexity, Amazon is facing its own backlash. Amazon’s Shop Direct functionality allows customers to peruse items from websites other than Amazon, and some of these items have a “buy for me” feature that enables an AI agent to purchase the item on the consumer’s behalf.

It’s a classic case of the Amazonian pot calling the kettle black.  

In some cases the AI agent has placed orders for items that were never listed or were out of stock. While Amazon states that it swiftly unlists any business owners that choose to opt out, many shopowners claim that their storefronts were made part of the “buy for me” feature without ever opting in. 

Behind these lawsuits and disputes over which AI agent will rule where is a deeper realization nobody is ready to acknowledge. It may be innovation-forward to say that the tech you have under development will reshape buying and selling goods, but it is definitely uncool to admit that we have no idea what the guardrails will be. 

Perplexity is not incorrect in stating that Amazon has some serious leverage to throw around in lawsuits. Also,when agents not sanctioned by the company encroach on the shopping experience, the ecommerce giant stands to lose a major chunk of its advertising revenue. 

Similarly, Amazon isn’t wrong that unsanctioned agentic activity may put its system, UX, and users at risk.

But here is the rub: With AI agents mediating purchases on behalf of consumers, firms stand to lose relationships. All that theory about making your storefront memorable and your brand recognizable is reduced dramatically when a non-human agent is parsing your website for data and the end-consumer may or may not realize which merchant they purchased from. 

So when we say that Agentic AI will change commerce, what we mean is that it will change who owns the customer, and for brands, the answer is dark: it will be the AI agents. 

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6 easy ways to get more interested in investing

I live and breathe this investing stuff.

So, sometimes I take my insane fervor interest in investing for granted.

But a lot of people aren’t me (thankfully). Many are either too busy, too distracted, or uninterested in investing. That’s a shame — because outside of building your own wealth, there isn’t an easier way to protect your (small) fortune and grow it over time.

So, why are so many closed out of investing? Why do 40% of 18-30 year olds NEVER want to participate in the stock market??

That’s a post for another time. For now, I want to focus on how to get more interested in the stock market, assuming that’s a worthy goal (I think it is).

How do you create interest in something you aren’t quite interested in to begin with?

Here are 6 ways to get more interested in investing

1. Get seriously informed about the market: In 1921, Harry Kitson wrote a book he thought was destined to help college students improve their study habits. Nah, it’s really a book about the science (hey, it’s close to 100 years young) of learning. How to Use Your Mind addresses the hard question of finding inspiration in learning. For Kitson, people don’t generally start with inspiration about learning. It’s about perspiration — working hard to learn a bit about a subject. The passion soon follows. (Source: How to Use Your Mind)

2. Look deeper: So much of what we know about the stock market is through our perception and personal histories. Maybe our parents were involved or maybe they were disinterested. But to create true, motivated interest in a subject, it takes changing our mental image, looking at investing differently. My grandfather was a Buffett-like figure but the markets today would have completely confounded him. I know is sounds kind of Zen-y but, “If you’re really paying attention, you can always go deeper, continuously. If you do, new worlds open for you..”  (Source: Quora)

3. Think good thoughts about the market: Negativity totally breeds negativity. Sometimes that may be warranted but most of the time, it clouds our thinking. The best investors I’ve met are always objective about their investing approach. They don’t let bad decisions wrack them. They move on, learning from their mistakes. The market is a great teacher and it demands its participants visualize success. Learning with passion about the market requires:

  • OUR choice: we practice because we want to, not because we’re forced to
  • build success on success: find ways to have success, however small. The positive feedback loop is powerful.
  • purpose to practice: underscoring everything should be a strong feeling of personal purpose. Answer the question why investing matters to you, (Source: Steve Pavlina)

4. Find friends who like the market: Not only does this stimulate a desire to learn about and participate in the market, it may improve your results. All else equal, social households — those who interact with their neighbors, or who attend church — are more likely to invest in the stock market than non-social households. It even extends to where you live — people living in states where people are likely to invest are themselves more likely to invest. Mutual fund managers who live in the same state are also more likely to trade the same stocks. We’re social animals and we learn from our friends. Investing ideas and education spread epidemically. We’re influenced by others’ behavior. Want to learn more about investing? Surround yourself with people who do, too.  (Source: Social Interaction and Stock Market Participation)

5. Use resources at work to dive in to investing: Just like having neighbors you can shoot the sh*t with about stocks, the market, and investing, your work environment can impact your learning about the market. Sure enough, employers that offer seminars on investing find their employees more educated about investing and more likely to invest. (Source: The Effects of Financial Education in the Workplace)

6. Try some new tools: The finance industry is not your father’s finance industry. You don’t have to work with cigar-smoking old dudes who wear suspenders. Platforms like Betterment simplify investing and make it easier to focus on the important things. Others like Personal Capital make it easier to get professional investment advice online. SigFig, Jemstep, and FutureAdvisor help to find waste in your portfolios and optimize them for performance. There’s a renaissance of investing tools that can help.

Don’t feel bad if you’re not all that into the markets. That distance is actually a good thing — it can make you a smarter, more objective investor. But like everything worthwhile in life, investing is a lifelong process of learning: learning about your own behavior and others.

You can do it, Slugger.