Michael Broughton needed $10,000. He was studying at the University of Southern California, trying to cover the remainder of his tuition. A loan might have closed the gap. His thin credit history got in the way. Here was the peculiar entrance exam for borrowing: first, demonstrate that somebody has already let you borrow. Broughton’s account of that rejection, told to the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, became the starting point for Altro.
- Altro connected familiar recurring expenses to credit building.
- Its 2024 digital card paired a $9.99 monthly membership with reporting to three bureaus.
- The company has since been acquired, its founders say.
The $10,000 catch
The interesting question was what the credit file left out. Someone could pay rent and subscriptions with clockwork regularity and still struggle to establish a borrowing history. Broughton and fellow USC student Ayush Jain built their company around those overlooked payments. Founded in 2019, it launched as Perch in 2020 and joined Y Combinator’s summer batch. The original application described a service for college students; the ambition grew to include people starting or rebuilding credit, especially communities poorly served by conventional finance. YC’s company record preserves that early pitch.
The name changed in May 2022. Altro meant “other” in Italian, the company explained: a fitting name for a business using other evidence of financial responsibility. Its funding announcement paired the rebrand with an $18 million Series A led by Pendulum, alongside investors including Marcy Venture Partners and Citi Ventures. It also reported a 200,000-person waitlist. That number measured interest, rather than paying customers, but the underlying frustration was easy to recognize.
The bill takes a detour
Consider the Netflix payment. In Altro’s later design, the customer put an eligible subscription on a restricted revolving credit line. Altro paid the subscription bill; the customer repaid Altro. Credit activity could then become information for a credit file. YC’s description specified a $75 line limited to subscriptions. The product’s appeal lay in attaching a new financial function to spending the member already intended to do.
The March 2024 launch put that idea on Hatch Bank’s issuing infrastructure and Discover Global Network. The launch announcement named Experian, TransUnion and Equifax as reporting destinations, and expanded availability from 10 states to 47. The card was tailored to digital subscriptions. This was a deliberately narrow tool for establishing payment history, with a bank and card network behind the app.
There were other ways to make bills visible. Experian Boost, for example, adds eligible bill payments to an Experian credit file. Altro’s card created a revolving credit relationship and announced reporting to all three bureaus. That difference explains its place among credit builders. It also prevents an easy misunderstanding: linking a familiar bill to a credit product still involves a credit product, with repayment at its center.
Free was the first thing to go
In 2022, Broughton had emphasized free access. By March 2024, the card required premium membership at $9.99 a month. The Los Angeles Business Journal reported that interchange income had not generated enough cash for expansion. Membership fees and business-to-business revenue entered the picture. Discover also had a reason to participate: more transactions could help grow its network.
“They forced us to have a working business model.”
Michael Broughton, on the Discover relationship
Los Angeles Business Journal, March 2024
Membership only. Subscription bills were additional. Annual figure calculated from the published monthly price.
The arithmetic changes the proposition. A member would be paying for the machinery that turns subscription spending into a credit record, in addition to paying for the subscriptions themselves. Free financial education and community access remained part of the 2024 offering. The paid layer had a more specific job. For a person with few opportunities to establish history, that job might matter; its value still depended on their circumstances.
Trust had to happen somewhere
Altro also tried to make finance feel less remote. Its educational library contained more than 350 audio clips by 2022. Later, Altro: Culture & Finance brought together lessons, gatherings and CONVOS interviews. A conversation with entertainer Jordyn Lucas explored becoming financially stable as a creator. The subject was money, but the point of entry was a life somebody recognized.
In a 2022 founder interview, Broughton described onboarding early users individually, checking whether they understood the product, and returning to the drawing board when they did not. Superusers helped test ideas. The useful lesson is practical: when the mechanism is unfamiliar, understanding belongs inside product development. A download alone cannot tell you whether someone knows what will happen to their payment.
There is a design argument here. If a customer already understands the monthly bill, the unfamiliar part can be isolated: which account pays it, when repayment happens, and what information gets reported. Explaining those steps plainly makes the promise easier to evaluate. A polished score screen cannot do that work by itself. Altro’s approach suggests that education was useful both as content to consume and as a way to make the transaction understandable.
A habit worth borrowing
Altro’s website now carries an acquisition farewell. Its founders recall first signing customers for rent reporting, leaving school and working from a hacker house. Broughton’s public exit announcement adds repeated pivots and a lesson about building toward profitability. The business had to earn its own financial footing while helping customers establish theirs.
What can another builder borrow? Start with behavior people already sustain. Find the useful result that behavior fails to produce. Then charge, partner and explain well enough to make the connection durable. Altro’s historical site also cautioned that score increases were not guaranteed. The idea depended on eligible payments, repayment and reporting; it could not promise every member the same outcome. The modest insight survives the company’s farewell: sometimes the missing piece is recognition for something a customer already does.