While chatting with my sister the other day, the topic of Robinhood Spending came up, I said something along the lines of “oh yeah their pseudo checking account” and she responded “what’s that”?
So through some screen sharing, I asked if she had the following menu:
And she showed me hers which included a “Gold” icon that was for the Gold Card. And it got me thinking, a few of the people I know who have the Robinhood Gold Card don’t use their Spending feature which could be sort of a gate at this point.
I’m pretty sure they’re already using the following criteria to cut out potential users:
- Active or pro users of the Robinhood investing app
- People with ample available credit
- People who would not hold a balance on the card
- People who would use the Gold card primarily for the 3% cashback without incurring any interest fees
- People who would be essentially credit cycling the card
- People with high credit scores, indicating much of the above points
This all comes from reading tons of random threads online but it seems to hold up. My sister and a few other people who have gotten it are of a younger demographic, 10+ years younger than me, meaning they might be more likely to hold a balance or not pay on time (purely based on my own experience of using credit cards 10 years ago). Others who have gotten it have credit scores between 650 to 720, but nobody who has it (that I know) has a credit score above 750. This easily can be a reason for Robinhood to be filtering me out, I’m currently around 770-780.
I’ve contacted Robinhood support about the Gold Card and they have only given me canned responses like we’re inviting people in waves and people are being invited based on when they signed up but that’s incorrect. My wife got hers a few days after signing up for the waitlist (and almost 10 months after me signing up for the waitlist). She has the same address as me and many of the same cards, the only difference being her credit score is 30-40 points lower than mine.
I also thought it was a location issue but with my wife getting her card, that seems to not hold up.