Dave (DAVE) CashAI Underwriting: v6 Reaches a Third of Users

Dave Inc. (DAVE) said on its August 5, 2026, earnings call that CashAI v6, the AI model that underwrites its ExtraCash advances, had reached about one-third of its user base. The company reported that its second-quarter 28-day past due metric improved 14 basis points year over year to 2.12%, and said the removal of fee caps was also working over the same period.[1]

Dave Inc. (DAVE) is a US mobile banking app that earns membership subscription fees, a fee on each ExtraCash advance, and interchange on Dave debit card spending. ExtraCash is the lead product: it sends a member a small amount of cash before payday and takes it back when the paycheck lands. CashAI is the AI model that decides whether an advance is approved, how large the limit is and when repayment is pulled. It ignores traditional credit scores and instead reads the transaction flow in the bank accounts members permission it to connect - when wages arrive, how the member normally spends, whether earlier advances were repaid on time. Every ExtraCash advance passes through it, so it is the company's credit decisioning process itself.

How Dave's CashAI underwriting model evolved

The public record reaches back to the November 12, 2023, earnings call, when Dave used two underwriting models aimed at different member populations to extend ExtraCash.[6] From there it advanced generation by generation. A new generation went fully live in the second quarter of 2024 with more than double the training variables of the version before it.[5] Version 5.5, launched at the end of the third quarter of 2025, was retrained around the new fee structure and carried close to twice the AI features of the prior version.[3] Version 6, which began rolling out in the second quarter of 2026, uses more than 700 features, nearly 400 of them new, and had reached roughly one-third of users as of August 5, 2026.[1]

The workflow was not renamed and was not folded into another system; what changed was its own generation and the products it governs. DaveFlex, the credit card product Dave began testing in the first quarter of 2026, has all of its underwriting handled by CashAI.[2]

Three years of readings, in two phases

The first phase did one thing: push losses down. In the third quarter of 2023, the 28-day delinquency rate improved 165 basis points year over year to 2.42%, the provision for credit losses was 1.7% of originations, and originations were $932 million.[6] In the third quarter of 2024, the delinquency rate was 1.78%, a 64 basis point improvement year over year, and the provision ratio fell to 1%.[5] In the first quarter of 2025, the delinquency rate was 1.5% and the provision ratio 0.69%.[4]

The second phase changed the framing. After v5.5 went live, the company began reporting results net of losses: the net monetization rate was 45 basis points higher year over year, revenue net of losses per transaction was 32% higher year over year, and the average transaction size was $213.[3] In the first quarter of 2026, the 28-day past due metric was 1.69%, only 1 basis point better year over year.[2] In the second quarter it was 2.12%, a 14 basis point improvement.[1]

The improvement narrowed from 165 basis points to 14 basis points, and what was swapped out along the way is what the company asks the model to deliver. The early 28-day delinquency rate and the 28-day past due metric featured from 2026 are not at the same level and cannot simply be subtracted from one another, and the first quarter carries an added boost from tax refund season. These figures do not connect into a single line.

Where the chain lands in the financials

The financial line this chain reaches is gross profit - revenue after the provision for credit losses. The model moves limits toward members who can repay and pulls them back from members who cannot. Transaction sizes and originations rise with it, so the per-advance fees Dave collects increase; as long as the provision does not rise in proportion, revenue minus provision gets thicker. That is the framing the company itself used for v6: it wants higher limits and expanded gross profit dollars.[1]

That expansion cannot yet be credited to the model. Removing fee caps and the new fee structure are also raising approved amounts, member tenure and tax refund season are also improving repayment, and the company attributes origination growth to active member counts and demand. The model's own share has never been broken out. Version 6 covers only about one-third of users, and the higher-limit, lower-loss claims come from test data and early indications. DaveFlex is underwritten entirely by this model, but the company says it does not expect meaningful revenue from it in 2026.[2]

What is confirmed and what to watch

The operating change that can be confirmed today is that this model has gone from a tool for suppressing losses to a tool for setting limits, and that its coverage has widened from ExtraCash to a credit card product. How much of those improvements belongs to the model has not been separately quantified.

The next reading that could change the assessment is the first full quarter after v6 reaches every user: whether the company reports revenue net of losses per transaction or gross profit alongside the past due metric, rather than the past due metric alone.

Application assessment

• CashAI Consumer Credit Underwriting | Business position: core business | Application stage: pilot | Scope: limited | Value type: revenue growth

Sources

[1] Drillr · Dave Inc. (DAVE) · 2026-08-05 · Earnings call

Original: Early results suggest V6 is delivering higher credit limits and is driving the desired outcome of expanded gross profit dollars.

[2] Drillr · Dave Inc. (DAVE) · 2026-05-05 · Earnings call

Original: Importantly, DaveFlex uses Cash AI to power 100% of the underwriting, giving us a meaningful edge over incumbent credit card products that rely on FICO, which we believe will lead to greater customer access and superior credit performance.

[3] Drillr · Dave Inc. (DAVE) · 2025-11-04 · Earnings call

Original: v5.5 has driven stronger conversion, higher approval amounts and improved credit outcomes in September and thus far in Q4, positioning us for further expansion in ExtraCash gross profit and revenue net of losses.

[4] Drillr · Dave Inc. (DAVE) · 2025-05-10 · Earnings call

Original: As a percentage of originations, our provision for credit losses declined to 0.69% from 0.94% in the same quarter last year, demonstrating CashAI's ongoing ability to leverage insights and performance data from the greater than 136 million unique ExtraCash transactions originated to date.

[5] Drillr · Dave Inc. (DAVE) · 2024-11-15 · Earnings call

Original: In Q3, we improved our 28 day delinquency rate to 1.78%, down 64 basis points year-over-year, over which time ExtraCash originations increased 46% as I mentioned a moment ago.

[6] Drillr · Dave Inc. (DAVE) · 2023-11-12 · Earnings call

Original: Compared to the third quarter of last year, our 28-day delinquency rate improved by 165 basis points to 2.42%, while we grew originations by 23% to $932 million.