Kesserwani claims banks cannot shut Cushion down without blocking their own customers
Paul Kesserwani · #51 This Bot Can Fight Your ATM Fees · Mar 3, 2025 · at 8:40
Cushion founder Paul Kesserwani responds to investor concerns on The Pitch about banks retaliating or blocking Cushion's automated fee negotiation service.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The way we're updating the product such that the message comes from the user, this can't get shut down, because essentially, the banks would be blocking their own customers.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Paul Kesserwani
Kesserwani: Cushion secures fee refunds for 80% of users
“80% of the folks who we fought fees for have gotten money back in some capacity.”
Kesserwani: Cushion recovers 30 cents per disputed dollar
“For every dollar that we're fighting, we're getting 30 cents back right now, but we're being very aggressive because we're trying to train the model and figure out what works and what doesn't.”
Kesserwani: Competitor Albert cannot take direct account actions
“No, they can't. They cannot take actions within the user's account.”
Kesserwani says Cushion automatically executes financial actions instead of giving advice
“Unlike other consumer finance companies out there that are just giving you advice, we're actually doing the work.”
Kesserwani: Bank Fee Market Is Worth $200 Billion
“This is the first thing we decide to go after because it's a two hundred billion dollar market.”
Kesserwani: Plaid only grants fintech apps read-only bank access
“Most folks today, if they want to start a fintech company, a consumer finance company, they connect to Plaid, or Plaid, which is a very popular data aggregator. They get read-only access to people's bank accounts. They cannot take any actions within their acco…”