Why Credit Card Cafe?

In 2023 I was just getting really into credit cards, trying to understand how to maximize my cash back over a diversification of categories. I had this idea to create an image layout to view all of my 5 credit cards at the time, and what types of purchases they should be used for. This worked really well, until I got another card and had to change everything.

Another thing happened at the same time: I noticed there was no unified source of credit card information. Some websites only wrote blog posts, while others left out cards entirely, if they were not earning them commissions.

So this is what I set out to build, a database of Credit Cards, with a dashboard to compare your own cards, and examine rewards.

I started explaining this project to friends and family, many were interested, but the value was just not apparent. They then learned to ask me about credit card recommendations, as I enjoyed researching for them. I saw the benefit of being able to simplify the recommendation process, and was set on my goal.

Originally, this project was called Credit Card Data Base, or CCDB. The idea was a user-submitted database of Credit Cards, with a simplified structure to easily add Credit Cards. I have since decided against this model. Wikipedia is a great resource and I throughly enjoy the user submission aspect, but it’s not what I had in mind.

I built a few versions of this website, each with vastly improved features and front-end design. Some of the early versions which I thought looked cool in retrospect look terrible!

One day in the summer of 2024, I was sitting at a coffee shop in my home town talking with my friend about this project, and I came to the realization: Cafe's are a user-first, user-friendly environment, where users freely come and return because of loyalty and trust. Which is inspiring to me. So I landed on the name Credit Card Cafe (not to mention, the domain name was available!)

What I have built thus far is supposed to be a tool, for you. An “intelligence platform” is what we like to call it when throwing buzzwords around. At its core, however, is a credit card data base and a dashboard.