Rise has opened the waitlist for a new credit card designed to reward tuition payments – whether K-12 private school, university or graduate school. The idea is to reward payments that don’t usually make sense by credit card, since most schools tack on a fee to pay by card. They describe:

• A no annual fee metal card that earns 1x on tuition with no fee (and they let you ACH the money or send a check); 3x on dining; 2x on groceries and 1x on everything else.

• No foreign transaction fees and points don’t expire.

• Points appear to be worth a penny apiece towards cash back at 42 merchants including airbnb; Alaska Airlines; Aman resorts (!); Apple; Delta Air Lines; Cheesecake Factory; Benihana (that still exists); lululemon; Four Seasons and more.

Think of this as trying to do for student tuition what Bilt does for rent, but Bilt points transfer to a variety of airline and hotel loyalty programs and can be redeemed for travel at 1.25 cents apiece through their portal and not just a 1 cent apiece.

You can earn 100,000 Rise points from tuition payments each year, which is equivalent to $100,000 in tuition spend per year. Room and board payments aren’t eligible (though I wonder to what extent they’re distinguishable).

They provide you an account number and routing number tied to your account. That way you can pay the school as though it’s an ACH payment. Funds either get charged to the credit card, or can be pulled from your bank account while earning rewards. (They also offer financing on tuition payments.)

This is great for tuition you are paying directly but I don’t view it as a substitute for other forms of college borrowing, since student loans are generally much lower cost than credit card APR or presumably their private placement loans – plus there are various programs that may forgive student loans in full or in part (such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness). As one commenter notes on Reddit, though, student loans aren’t generally dischargeable in bankruptcy – while credit card debt is.

If you pay private school or university tuition it seems like this product will make great sense. Whether you use it for other spend, even in accelerator categories, seems like a harder sell. Unless they can generate significant revolve, it’s going to be very hard to make any money since the rest of the card doesn’t appear designed well to attract spend outside of tuition.

I don’t know how far along the product is. Their CEO’s resume suggests the venture was formed in January, and their Twitter account was created this month.

Their website doesn’t list a bank issuer, so I reached out to ask whether they have one yet. Their CEO tells me, “We don’t yet have an issuing bank. We’re planning on getting one after we can show the consumer demand for the product from our waitlist.”

So you can join the waitlist and help bring this into reality, as well as get a reminder to apply when that’s possible.