The modern loyalty program occupies a curious place on corporate balance sheets, recorded as a liability that many issuers quietly prefer never comes due.

For decades the economics of credit card rewards have rested on a predictable pattern of human behavior, namely that a substantial share of the points, miles, and cash-back balances consumers earn will sit dormant, expire, or be redeemed at a fraction of their advertised worth. Programs engineered around aspirational travel, tiered status, and partner portals have rewarded the disciplined few who master their rules while leaving the majority to accumulate value they rarely convert into anything tangible. The outcome is an industry that markets generosity while monetizing friction, and a generation of younger cardholders who have grown skeptical that the figures printed on their statements bear any relationship to money they will ever actually see.

Coverd, an Andreessen Horowitz backed fintech company preparing to bring its first product to market this summer, is wagering that this arrangement has reached the end of its useful life. The company’s namesake card, developed under founder and chief executive Albert Wang, is built around a single proposition that inverts the conventional model. Where traditional programs award points to be banked and deciphered later, the newly launched Coverd Card returns cash back on many purchases instantly, in amounts that can reach the full value of the transaction. A cardholder who buys groceries, fills a tank of gas, or orders lunch may find the purchase partially offset or, in certain cases, entirely covered at the moment of the swipe.

The mechanism behind that promise is a transparent rewards matrix that the company publishes openly, an unusual posture in a category long accustomed to burying its rules in fine print. The amount a cardholder earns on any given purchase is determined by where that purchase falls within the matrix, a structure that accounts for spending category, timing, and transaction size, and that yields a defined cash-back figure in place of an opaque accrual of points. Once those rewards are earned, the company returns the decision of what to do with them to the cardholder, who may apply a balance directly as a statement credit, take it as straightforward cash back, or carry it into a set of interactive in-app features designed to let users increase what they have already earned.

That emphasis on routine, unglamorous spending is deliberate, and it marks a departure from a rewards landscape oriented largely toward frequent business travelers and high-balance luxury consumers. Coverd’s early usage data points toward the categories that dominate ordinary household budgets, with cardholders concentrating their activity at major retailers and quick-service or fast-food restaurants including. The company has positioned the card around the spending of the broad majority of consumers whose everyday purchases have historically generated the thinnest and slowest-accruing rewards, a population that legacy programs have been comparatively slow to court.

The interactive layer reflects a wider shift in how a younger cohort of consumers expects to engage with financial products. Major investing, prediction market, and language learning companies have shown that introducing elements of immediacy, feedback, and play into categories once regarded as static can meaningfully change the frequency and depth of user engagement. Coverd is applying a comparable logic to the most habitual financial activity in most people’s lives, on the premise that rewards experienced in real time and shaped by the user carry a resonance that deferred points have never managed to deliver.

The early signals suggest the proposition is finding an audience ahead of the card’s formal debut. Coverd reports a waitlist of roughly 50,000 prospective cardholders and says it has covered more than $25 million in consumer purchases through its app to date, including more than $10 million in the month of May 2026 alone. Pre-launch, the company reports its application has been drawing approximately 3,000 downloads, pre launch.

Coverd has raised capital from a group of investors that includes Andreessen Horowitz, through its Speedrun program, along with Tusk Ventures, Yolo Investments, WndrCo, and Volt Capital. Its card is issued through Rain, a blockchain-based card infrastructure platform valued at $1.95 billion.

Whether Coverd can convert pre-launch enthusiasm into a durable market position will depend on questions that only scale can answer, among them the economics of returning so much value to cardholders so quickly and the company’s ability to sustain its rewards matrix as its user base expands. What the company has identified, and what its early traction appears to support, is a real gap between the way the rewards industry has long operated and the way a rising generation of consumers expects to interact with their money.

If that gap proves as wide and as lasting as Coverd is betting, the card’s arrival this June may register less as the debut of a single product than as an early marker of where credit card rewards are heading.

A brutal selloff swept through IT stocks on Friday, but Infosys bore the brunt of the carnage. Shares of the IT major plunged 9% to Rs 1,030 on the BSE, their lowest level since October 6, 2020, wiping out nearly Rs 40,000 crore in market capitalisation within minutes. The sharp decline came a day after Accenture lowered the upper end of its annual revenue growth forecast, reigniting concerns over weakening discretionary technology spending.

The sharp reaction was hardly surprising. Infosys ADRs had tumbled 10% overnight in the US, setting the stage for a steep correction in domestic markets.

Accenture’s softer outlook reinforced a growing concern among investors that enterprises continue to remain cautious on discretionary spending related to IT consulting and digital transformation projects, even as investments in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity remain intact.

The development carries significant implications for Indian IT companies, which derive a substantial portion of their revenues from North America and frequently compete with Accenture for large digital transformation mandates.

Infosys, for its part, has been aggressively expanding its artificial intelligence capabilities to offset pricing pressure in its traditional services business. The company has deepened investments in AI engineering, data and cloud through platforms such as Topaz and Cobalt, while also strengthening partnerships with OpenAI, Microsoft and Nvidia.

Management has previously said that the deployment of AI tools, including GitHub Copilot across more than 30,000 developers, is helping generate new AI-led opportunities, while cushioning the impact of productivity-led pricing pressure.
Also read: IT Stocks: TCS, Infosys, Wipro, other IT stocks crash up to 8% as Accenture lowers FY26 guidance

US Fed delivers blow
Adding to the pressure was the latest policy outcome from the US Federal Reserve, which struck a hawkish tone and fuelled expectations of a rate hike later this year, raising concerns over a potential slowdown in discretionary spending.

Although the Fed kept rates unchanged, market expectations shifted sharply. According to CME Group’s FedWatch tool, the probability that rates would remain unchanged by the end of the year dropped to 15.7% from 40% on Tuesday. Traders now see nearly a 38% chance of a 25 basis-point rate hike by December, while the probability of a 50 basis-point hike stands at nearly 33%.

The implications are particularly important for Indian IT firms, which generate a large share of their business from North America. Higher borrowing costs or persistent inflation in the US could curb discretionary spending by enterprises, potentially affecting demand for technology services.

The sector has already endured a volatile year. Earlier in 2026, rapid advances in artificial intelligence sparked concerns about potential disruption to India’s IT services model. Sentiment was further dented by the escalating conflict in the Middle East, which weighed on broader markets and overshadowed the temporary support provided by a weaker rupee.

Read more: RIL AGM strategy: How to trade Reliance shares amid big-bang announcements by Mukesh Ambani?

Accenture Q3

For the third quarter, Accenture posted earnings per share of $3.80, compared with $3.49 in the same period last year, surpassing analyst expectations. Revenue increased 5.6% year-on-year to $18.7 billion, though it came in slightly below estimates of $18.76 billion.

Total bookings fell 1.9% to $19.32 billion during the quarter. A 15% decline in managed services bookings weighed on the overall figure, although this was partly offset by a 13% rise in consulting bookings.

Accenture also raised its full-year adjusted earnings per share forecast to $13.78-$13.90. The company left its operating cash flow and free cash flow guidance unchanged and continues to expect annual free cash flow in the range of $10.8 billion to $11.5 billion.

The latest selloff adds to an already painful year for investors. Infosys shares have tumbled 36% since the start of 2026, while the Nifty IT index has plunged 29% on a year-to-date basis.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

A new report on the U.S. housing sector finds that activity remains subdued through the first part of the year as high costs suppress demand.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released its annual “State of the Nation’s Housing” report on Wednesday, which found that existing home sales remain near the lowest level in three decades that was first reached in 2023.

Sales of new homes remained relatively unchanged, while rental retention rates rose and new occupancies declined. New construction starts dipped 1% over the last year, driven by a 7% decline in single-family starts.

“Although supply shortages are still a major concern, depressed demand became a headline in housing over the past year,” the report said, noting slower growth in the number of homeowner households as well as the number of renters compared with a year ago. 

MEDIAN US HOME PRICE PROJECTED TO HIT $1 MILLION BY 2050 – RIGHT AS MILLENNIALS RETIRE

The rate of growth of homeowner households declined by half and caused homeownership rates to decline for the second straight year. Additionally, the year-over-year increase in the number of renters in the first quarter of 2026 was less than half of what it was a year earlier.

Economic uncertainty has weighed on housing demand, with employment growth slowing from a gain of 1.5 million in 2024 to just 116,000 in 2025.

Consumer confidence dropped by more than 20 percentage points in 2025 and fell further in the first part of 2026 due to the Iran war, reaching an all-time low in April.

MORTGAGE RATES TICK HIGHER, BUT BUYERS SHOW SIGNS OF CONFIDENCE

“Without a job, graduates are less likely to form a new household or move to a new region,” the report said. “Without confidence in employment, families are less likely to move or make a big purchase like a house.”

High costs and the lack of affordable housing options are also contributing to the weaker demand, as households are struggling with high home prices and interest rates.

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The report said that the median prices for new and existing homes are both over $400,000 and that existing home prices have risen 54% since 2020 and are about 5-times the median income – a level well above the ratio of 3-times that prevailed in the 1990s.

Mortgage rates are over 6%, which makes the payment on a median-priced home $3,100 in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from $1,700 in early 2020. That has pushed the income needed to afford that payment to more than $120,000 – a significant increase from $66,000 in 2020.

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