1. Cool-that would be a good thing to put on your site somewhere. Since you're thinking affiliate fees, how you will avoid the agency problem? e.g. A ton of businesses push the premium cards (Amex Plat, CSR, etc) with high commissions but almost no one pushes cards that have small affiliate fees but that would generally be great for the majority of people. Think Citi Double Cash and the various limited 3x cards.

3. Personally, a blurb about your data deletion policy, putting it in your TOS that you will never sell transaction history/personally identifying info, and making Plaid (or VISA) more front and center moves the needle. I trust Plaid more than I trust some random entity with "bank level encryption." Not sure if I'm the right one to ask about this one as I'm not your target.

5. Cool. Didn't realize CC signup decisions were weighed so heavily by people. IME people just generally went with the marketing (think store cards and/or cards with big marketing budgets like Cap1). Maybe I'm desensitized after doing this stuff for so long.....