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Tymit, the only company interested in new UK co-brand credit cards, walks away

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You have probably never heard of Tymit, but for much of the last two years it seemed like it was going to play a big part in your life.

Tymit was a fintech start-up that wanted to cross Buy Now Pay Later with a traditional credit card.

Instead of letting you roll over your balance indefinitely, each transaction had to be either settled immediately at the end of the month (like a charge card) or split into three to 36 monthly payments. There was no option to roll over your debt indefinitely which in many ways was a good thing.

Tymit credit card closed

Tymit had launched a credit card under its own brand but knew that it needed to partner with big names to make an impact.

It closed its Tymit-branded card to new applicants during 2023 and, in an attempt to get customers to close their accounts, introduced a £6.99 monthly fee.

In February 2024 it launched two co-brand credit cards with Harley Davidson – see here. This wasn’t a totally crazy idea, because Harley owners have the same enthusiasm for their hobby as many miles and points collectors.

Tymit was also in discussions with multiple airline and hotel groups about launching co-brand Visa credit cards.

And then, very quickly, it all shut down. Despite only launching in February, the Harley Davidson credit cards were recently closed to new applications.

It was a major turnaround for a business that only completed its first major fundraising (£23m) in October 2022.

Tymit has now pulled the plug completely

To quote from its website:

While we’ve worked hard to explore all options to keep Tymit Credit running, we’ve unfortunately had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service.

With the high interest rate environment and resulting increased costs of capital it’s sadly unsustainable to continue offering the service. As a result your Tymit Credit account will be suspended from making new purchases as of the 14th November 2024.

With subsequent closure of settled accounts starting from the 15th December 2024

We know this isn’t the news you were hoping for, this is disappointing for us too. Tymit Credit was designed to provide you with a new experience with more transparency and control than mainstream credit cards, and the whole team at Tymit worked very hard to live up to those expectations.

Tymit credit card closed

In all honesty, Tymit made a mistake by chasing travel co-brand deals. The company could only make money if you didn’t settle your charges immediately and instead decided to repay in three to 36 instalments.

Holders of travel co-brand credit cards are generally well paid professionals and do not pay interest.

It would have incurred huge costs in borrowing money to give cardholders a few weeks free ‘float’ before they settled their bill whilst generating virtually no interest income.

Tymit has a new mission

Tymit has, to use that terrible venture capital phrase, ‘pivoted’.

Here’s the new plan:

Now, we’re channelling this same pioneering spirit into creating the next generation of instalment experiences. Whether offered in-store or in the online checkout, Tymit instalment programs are already helping merchant partners win, keep and get closer to their customers — and always with control and financial peace of mind at the core of the offering.

The new plan won’t concern you. The problem is that Tymit was the only credit card company that I knew to be actively seeking travel co-brand deals in the UK.

For now at least, Currensea – with its new Hilton Honors debit card and a unique ‘no capital’ model (because it’s not lending money) – is the only game in town for any airline or hotel group wanting to launch a UK payment card.

Capital on Tap, meanwhile, continues to grow at leaps and bounds, supported by the generous interchange fees still available on small business credit cards. Why more travel groups have not launched SME cards remains a mystery.

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Comments (49)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Harrier25 says:
    28 Oct28 October 08:42

    The issue Hilton and Currensea will have is that many people will pay the annual fee for Gold tier but will never use the card. At least with the Barclaycard you are forced to spend £10k per year to keep Gold.

    • Rob says:
      28 Oct28 October 08:47

      Correct, or many will only use it abroad. It’s going to take a while for the patterns to emerge because obviously fewer people are travelling over the winter anyway. It’s also likely that people who apply at this time of year are more status driven whilst those who would apply around Easter do put more value on points earning whilst travelling and will use it over the summer.

      • Sharka says:
        28 Oct28 October 09:40

        Presumably, the problem is the 0.3% interline fee cap. The US cards (for example, Hilton Aspire and Marriott Brilliant) offer substantial value for holders and the annual fee is recouped from sensible use: however, that is on the back of around 3% interline and a larger domestic economy.

    • James says:
      28 Oct28 October 12:58

      Worth throwing in a stat here – 85% of UK card transactions are on debit cards. So conversely, if you’re UK based and tend to prefer using a debit card, there are very few reasons not to use the card for everyday spend.

  • Tom says:
    28 Oct28 October 08:59

    “High interest environment” – guess the main problem with this business was they didn’t Tymit well

  • Peter says:
    28 Oct28 October 09:30

    “With the high interest rate environment.” This is nonsense. Yes interest rates are higher than since 2008, but this is not a “high interest rate environment” for those of us who remember before 2008, or even back to the last three decades of the 20th century. I wish businesses would stop using this excuse. It’s the period from 2008 to 2022 that was abnormal at 0.5% base rate.

    I don’t t know but I suspect that the card was run by those under 40 who have not been in a normal interest environment.

    • Super Secret Stuff says:
      28 Oct28 October 12:32

      Problem is certain groups of people thought it would last forever…

      • BlairWaldorfSalad says:
        28 Oct28 October 14:14

        Problem is kids are being taught the binomial theorem at school rather than economics and basic personal finance.

    • CJD says:
      28 Oct28 October 14:16

      I would argue that if you’re having to go back 17 years to find a time when interest rates were this high, then it qualifies as a high interest rate environment.

      Black Monday is closer to a time when rationing was still happening in the UK than it is to the present day

      • George says:
        28 Oct28 October 17:02

        Also, 5% of the average house price is a lot more than eg 5% of the average house price say 30 years ago when adjusting for inflation etc, so an increase has a much bigger impact than it used to.

        Agreed in general on the low interest rates being the blip rather than the norm though.

    • Track says:
      30 Oct30 October 21:37

      You are missing the point.

  • Andrew. says:
    28 Oct28 October 09:53

    “Pivot”. Isn’t that financial slang for raising your middle finger at your funding partners?

    “Sit on that and pivot”.

  • David says:
    28 Oct28 October 10:10

    What happens to 23m fundraised? Vanishes into thin air? Nobody gets anything back?

    • Rob says:
      28 Oct28 October 10:25

      They’re not shutting down, just using the £23m for other projects the original investors didn’t sign up for! Most came from Frasers Group though who are big on BNPL.

  • Yona says:
    29 Oct29 October 21:55

    Timyt was my only travel card and I used to take full advantage of the 3 free months of credit (more than that and you would pay interests). They had a weird feature where you could sort of game the system and roll your credit forward endlessly if you knew what you were doing (happened to me randomly when I had to refund a large payment … but I am sure some discovered the trick and took advantage of it).

    It is too bad to see them go as they did one thing only and did it well. However the business was not sustainable without a proper treasury and high interest rates killed them.

    • Rob says:
      29 Oct29 October 22:07

      It was a bad model, attracting people with poor credit scores who were defaulting and who wouldn’t pay an annual fee. A co-brand with a decent annual fee and virtually no defaults would have looked better.

      The REAL issue is that, as we’ve seen from Amex and ‘Plan It’, a smart idea isn’t so smart if your competitors can quickly copy it and you end up doing the same as the big boys but sub-scale.

      • yonasl says:
        30 Oct30 October 12:13

        There is a very good business in taking sub-prime clients and finding a right balance between lending them £500 and then charging them just as much in interests.

        • Rob says:
          30 Oct30 October 12:20

          …. which Tymit couldn’t do because of the BNPL element which enforced repayment!

  • Track says:
    30 Oct30 October 21:40

    They have given a business explanation: to carry credit card business, they need large amount of reserve against POTENTIAL purchases. Lines of credit available to them are far above 5%, maybe 2x-3x that. They can’t simply borrow at 15% and deposit for 3.75%, the math does not work. It is a high rates environment, and less to do with co-branded cards etc. One of cases where it’s clear how high rates do affect a business model.

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