Mesa shuts down credit card that rewarded cardholders for paying their mortgages

Fintech startup Mesa has shut down its Homeowners Card, which awarded points to cardholders for paying their mortgages.

A message on the Mesa website states that as of December 12, “all Mesa Homeowners Card accounts are closed,” adding, “All credit cards have been deactivated and you are no longer able to make any new purchases or earn Mesa Points.”

A Mesa FAQ about the shutdown described this as “a business decision to close the Mesa Homeowners Card Program entirely.” TechCrunch has reached out to Mesa for additional comment on its future plans.

The startup launched just over a year ago, in November 2024, with $9.2 million in funding ($7.2 million in equity funding and $2 million in debt). It offered two products — mortgage loans with 1% cash back, as well as the credit card with rewards including cash back, travel, and offset mortgage payments.

At the time, CEO Kelley Halpin told TechCrunch that the startup had “taken what everybody loves about travel and dining cards to re-contextualize that for the homeowner/parent.”

In theory, you could earn points for home expenses by using any credit card with rewards, but Mesa said it structured its points program to incentivize spending related to home ownership.

“So it’s not rewarding you on travel and dining spend; it’s rewarding you on gas, groceries, your HOA, utilities, home goods as well as your mortgage payment,” Halpin said.

Bilt, which has a rewards card that allows customers to earn points on rent payments, says it will expand with points for mortgage payments when it launches a revamped card next year.

Mesa’s card shutdown has been covered by travel deals websites like One Mile at a Time and Upgraded Points, which say that Mesa cardmembers have been complaining about declined transactions for the past week, with the company initially claiming this was only a temporary outage.

Now, it seems the only remaining way to redeem points earned on the Mesa card is through a statement credit at a rate of 0.6%.