Intro

Recently, we looked into Altro, a platform that enables users to build their credit using their existing recurring subscriptions. Altro's primary audience is marginalized people and individuals who haven’t been able to access traditional credit building opportunities and tools. A Y Combinator startup, Altro was founded in 2019 (originally with the name Perch Credit) and is located in Los Angeles.

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Product

Altro’s offerings are only available through their app, which can be downloaded through the iOS or Google Play app stores. All you need to create an account is a valid phone number. 

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Once you’ve created an account, users can either use the free version of Altro or choose to pay $9.99 a month (or $90 annually) for Altro premium. With the free version, users have access to Altro’s community events (both in-person and virtual) and financial literacy program, which is a catalog of 350+ educational audio clips, videos, and courses covering financial topics related to credit as well as things like crypto, investing, and more. Premium users can additionally apply for Altro’s credit builder credit card, which can be used to make payments on their existing recurring subscription payments (to see a list of eligible subscriptions, click here). Altro partners with Hatch Bank for their card and currently reports all users’ card activity  to Equifax but are “actively working” to be able to report to Transunion and Experian soon.

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Creativity

According to a recent survey, the average American has 4.5 video streaming subscriptions and spends around $77 a month on those plus various other subscriptions. The same people who are making these payments may very likely be the people who haven’t previously had access to financial literacy training and credit building opportunities, so we think that Altro has identified a prime opportunity to help people build their credit.

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The Altro credit card has fewer application requirements than your typical credit card, which means it’s possible for more people to be approved, particularly those who haven’t been able to be approved for standard credit cards. To see the eligibility criteria, click here. 

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What makes Altro creative is the social aspect of their offerings. The combination of Altro’s relevant, aesthetically pleasing education resources as well as attractive, socially diverse and inclusive events makes it a unique mashup of finance and culture. It wasn’t surprising to learn that Altro has already been endorsed by several celebrities, including Jay-Z and his Marcy Venture Partners.

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Overall Altro knows what their targeted audience values and has created a product that is attractive to them, with lots of Southern-California vibes. 

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Website

Altro is undoubtedly a cool company, and their website is a far cry from other typical finance-focused fintechs. But that’s where we started running into several problems. While the website is unique and stylish, we found it really difficult to find specific information detailing how the financial side of Altro actually works. After navigating around for quite awhile, we finally stumbled across the FAQ section that provided more of the fine print details about their credit card (details we think are necessary to know before committing to anything). But even this section isn’t designed very well, and we still couldn’t find answers to all of the questions we wanted answered before downloading the app or considering applying for their credit card.  We think this is a huge miss.

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User Experience

The Altro app is easy to navigate. In the app there are three main tabs where all Altro’s offerings can be found: Home, Card, and Convos. The Home tab is where you can find their financial literacy content, Card is where you sign up for their credit builder card and monitor your payments, and Convos is primarily where their community content and podcast episodes are located. 

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We unfortunately had technical issues when we tried to go through the process of applying for the Altro credit card – every time we got to the open banking page to connect our bank account via Plaid to the app, the page rerouted us back to the beginning “Let’s Get Started!” page. 

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Overall Recommendation

While overall we like the idea of Altro and can see how it has the potential to provide a simple way to help underserved people build their credit, we had too many unanswered questions about the specific financial processes and benefits. Without that information, we regrettably can’t recommend the premium version of Altro, which includes use of their credit card (the main credit-building service they provide). Some people may be willing to apply for a credit card without having access to all of the fine print details, but we unfortunately can’t.

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