Richest Man: It All Started With My Rebate System-Chapter 55: Another Intention Of Wasteful Spending

The next morning.

Steven had just finished eating breakfast and was about to call Hargreaves, when his phone started ringing.

It was an unknown number and for a moment, he contemplated on how it could possibly be, before picking the call.

A familiar male voice came from the other end and it was Fletcher’s.

"Mr. Craig," Fletcher said. "Good morning. I’m calling with the confirmed specifications for your custom card. Do you have a few minutes?"

"Go ahead," Steven said, setting his coffee cup down.

"The card will be palladium, same sourcing as the Reserve Card. We’ve matched the weight and dimensions as closely as the debit architecture allows. For the finish, we have two options — matte or brushed. Both feel similar in hand but the brushed catches the light on the card’s surface slightly differently."

"Brushed," Steven said.

"Noted. Your full name will appear on the face as it does on the account. Steven Craig, with no additional text. The card carries a unique numbering sequence rather than our standard format, which means it won’t read as a conventional card to anyone who sees it. It simply won’t match anything they’ve seen before."

"That works," Steven said.

"For feature integration," Fletcher continued, "the full partner network access, global concierge line, and travel benefits have all been mapped onto the debit structure without compromise. Everything the Reserve Card offers in terms of access transfers cleanly. The one structural difference is that transactions draw directly from your account rather than from a credit line, which is exactly what you specified."

"Good," Steven said in satisfaction.

"Security is handled through a PIN setup that we’ll walk you through on delivery. Given that this is a unique card with no standard replacement pipeline, we’re also building a dedicated emergency access protocol specifically for you. If the card is ever lost or compromised, there’s a direct line to my office rather than a general support channel."

"Nice. I really appreciate that," Steven said.

"Production is confirmed at three to four weeks from today. The estimated delivery date is the fourteenth of next month. We’ll arrange direct delivery to your address with a confirmation call on the morning."

"That works," Steven said.

"Is there anything you’d like adjusted before we proceed?"

"Yes, one more thing," Steven said. "For the Reserve Card settlement, I want a fixed weekly cycle, drawn directly from my linked account. I’d like that in place before the end of the current cycle."

There was a brief pause as Fletcher made a note.

"Weekly settlement with direct account draw. I’ll have that confirmed with Mr. Hargreaves today and the structure in place before the week closes. You’ll receive written confirmation through the standard channel."

"Good," Steven said.

"Is there anything else, Mr. Craig?"

"That’s everything," Steven said. "Thank you, Fletcher."

"Of course. Have a good morning."

The call ended.

Steven set the phone down on the coffee table, with a satisfied smile on his face.

They say that with enough money, everything can be made easy. Steven found that statement to be very true.

He thought of what he was going to do with his morning and the entire day as a whole, but he wasn’t able to come up with anything.

He randomly decided to check his account balance and he saw that it was still at $4.4M, but only short of $30,000 to hit $4.5M.

He felt like increasing the balance, as it had been stagnant for a while now. He thought of how to do that and he decided to beat his old habit, and try wasteful spending.

His mind almost immediately went back to the TikTok livestream of the girl that had sung wonderfully. But the livestream wasn’t what he was thinking about at the moment. Rather, he was thinking about the transactions he did that night.

He had been restricted that night by three separate ceilings working against him simultaneously — TikTok’s platform recharge limits, his bank’s transaction protocols, and the standard debit card’s own daily caps.

Each one had put a floor under how much he could move in a single session, and the result had been a slow, incremental process that had produced reasonable returns but nowhere near what the numbers could have been with fewer constraints.

With the benefits the Reserve Card offers, it changes two of those three variables entirely, erasing the bank-side caps, daily limits and fraud flags triggered by unusual activity.

The only remaining question was TikTok’s platform ceiling, and the only way to find out where that ceiling actually sat was to test it directly.

He decided to go ahead and test it. He picked up his phone and opened the platform’s web app that allows custom purchase amounts.

He clicked on the tab and typed in $10,000, and proceeded. He was taken to the page where he was asked to confirm paying with already saved card details or add another.

He added another, saved its details and clicked on purchase. The page loaded for a second and returned with an error message.

Steven clicked his tongue in disappointment when he saw this. He knew that the problem wasn’t from the card but the platform.

He went back to the purchase and typed in a lesser amount, $5,000, and clicked on purchase.

The page loaded for a second and showed a transaction successful message.

Steven nodded slowly in mild satisfaction and typed the amount again, and he got another transaction successful message.

He did it again without pausing, and again.

By the fifth transaction, the rhythm had settled into something almost mechanical. Select amount, confirm, wait for the success message, repeat.

He was on the tenth when the eleventh triggered a verification request, which he quickly completed without breaking pace and continued.

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

On the fifteenth attempt, the platform returned an error message, saying that he had hit the platform limit and that the ceiling had been reached for the session.

Steven made a note of the platform ceiling and opened the TikTok app. He navigated to the livestream section and searched for the girl’s account, pulling up what he could remember of the username.

The search returned nothing active, probably indicating that she wasn’t live. Or probably because he had typed in a wrong username. He had no idea.

He scrolled the feed instead, moving through the grid of thumbnails without hurrying.

Most of it passed without catching him. A cooking stream. Someone reviewing sneakers. A man doing impressions to a small audience.

He kept scrolling. Then he stopped as a thumbnail showed a group of people on what looked like a cleared floor, mid-movement. The viewer count read 487. He tapped it and the audio came through.

They were dancing. Six of them, roughly his age, in a space that had been arranged for exactly this — a wide room, good lighting, a clean hardwood floor.

The music was something uptempo with a driving baseline and they were moving to it together, not loosely but in tight, coordinated formation.

He watched for a moment, with his thumb hovering over his screen, ready to swipe if he didn’t like what he was seeing.

The dance was choreographed and they were good. The synchronisation was clean, the formations changed on the beat, and the lead dancer in the centre had a quality of movement that made it difficult to look at anything else when he was in frame.

He watched for another thirty seconds, then navigated to the gift panel. He found his preferred gift, Universe, at the top of the list and clicked on it, gifting the account.

He flooded the livestream with five Universes in a row, immediately earning a wave of reactions from the audience and causing the dancers to stop on the spot.