our mission
We're on a mission to democratize credit for all.
We're on a mission to democratize credit for all.
Meet our team
Our team at Firstcard has more than 40 years of combined experience in the finance and tech industries.
Ma Qing
CMO
Entrepreneur and experienced Marketing leader. Ex-JPMorgan, Public.com, Republic.
Daniel Junqueira
Co-Founder and CTO
Leading engineering teams for 10+ years.
Dr. Richard Dasher
Board Director
Adjunct Professor at Stanford University.
Kenji Niwa
Co-Founder and CEO
Serial Entrepreneur, UC Berkeley MBA.
Mateus Milanez
Sr. Software Engineer
Experienced Software Engineer, passionate about coding.
Diogo Melo
Sr. Software Engineer
13+ years of experience developing great software.
Hannah Semaya
Marketing Intern
Student at Boston University.
The Firstcard Story
Firstcard was founded in 2020 by immigrant entrepreneur Kenji Niwa, who moved to the United States after successfully selling his first startup in Japan.
When he first arrived, Kenji faced many challenges securing a credit card and car loan due to his lack of credit history. There was limited financial education available regarding credit scores in the US. Realizing that he was not alone and that many immigrants, international students, and people with low credit scores face similar obstacles, Kenji decided to build Firstcard to help everyone build credit regardless of their background or credit history.
Credit building for everyone
At Firstcard, we believe that everyone should be able to build credit – no matter who they are, where they are from, or what their credit history is.
We aim to help immigrants, foreigners, non-US citizens, international students, first-generation college students, first-time credit builders and POC in the US who are often denied credit due to the limited access to credit-building tools provided by traditional banks.
When other banks reject you, we're the first to believe in you.
