FinTech news in credit category

The round was led by Japanese bank Mizuho Bank, a subsidiary of Mizuho Financial Group that contributed $125 million. It included participation from returning investors like Square Peg Capital, Jungle Ventures, Naver Financial Corporation, GMO Venture Partners and Openspace Ventures.

Highbeam, a startup that provides banking features, credit and cash flow insights to e-commerce customers, today announced that it raised $10 million in debt from TriplePoint as it looks to expand the reach of its digital product portfolio.

Noble today emerged from stealth and announced the close of a $15 million Series A round led by Insight Partners with participation from Cross River Digital Ventures, Plug & Play Ventures, Y Combinator, Flexport Fund, TLV Partners, Operator Partners, Verissimo Ventures, Interplay Ventures and the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

X1 Card is taking a different tack by underwriting customers based on their income rather than their credit scores, which the company says enables it to set credit limits up to 5x higher than traditional card providers.

While banks use rigorous credit policies and don’t care much about small businesses, particularly those without any local credit history or track record, informal lenders act as loan sharks to the detriment of these businesses.

So lenders can use Indicina for credit scoring and bank sentiment analysis, getting access to ML-driven financial analytics and improved insights into consumers they currently don’t have and derisk unsecured loans.

Parents must opt into the automatic investment feature, and if they don’t want their funds invested in the ETFs Greenlight pre-determines are relatively safe, they can also choose to invest that cash in other ways through Greenlight investment app or opt for the cash to go directly to their bank account, Sheehan said. The Greenlight-branded card, offered through Mastercard, offers up to 3% unlimited cash back on all purchases and gives parents the option to automatically invest those cash rewards in stocks and ETFs to spend on family-related expenses, co-founder and CEO Tim Sheehan told journalist. Sheehan said the company considered designing the card so cash back accrued into a 529 plan, a tax-advantaged educational savings account parents can open on behalf of their children. Plenty of investment platforms, including Bank of America, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, offer credit cards that automatically invest cash rewards into the market, but Greenlight hopes its focus on families and their needs will help it stand out.

Altro (Perch) announced today it has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round led by Pendulum, with participation from Marcy Ventures, as well as Citi Ventures, Black Capital Fund, Concrete Rose Fund and individual investors such as Dick Parsons and Deborah Quazzo.

Acknowledging that credit card issuing and loyalty programs are certainly not new, Duncan claims that Concerto’s approach is unique in that it applies technologies including machine learning to measure and predict risk.

But starting today, Stilt said, any fintech or digital bank that wants to offer credit building tools, revolving lines of credit or personal loans to its customers could do so using its API-powered product.

SteadyPay CEO and co-founder John Downie, who had spent most of his career building tech solutions for banks, realized that existing lending solutions did not address the needs of workers with irregular income. Both existing and new investors participated in SteadyPay’s latest fundraise alongside Digital Horizon, including Ascension Ventures (via their impact Fair By Design fund), the U.K. government’s Future Fund.

Shop owners who intend to offer loans to their end consumers get higher credit lines from Chari, which shares the data collated from Karny (on end consumers’ purchasing behaviour) with FMCG companies that pay for the cost of the higher loans.

The approach is a relatively new one in the U.K., although Fenwick believes that this will likely (and rapidly) evolve not just because HELOC businesses like Selina’s are being given the green light, but because of the ubiquity of home ownership; and the fact that more people, as they move around less due to the pandemic, have turned their attention to spending bigger amounts on things like home renovations or less-frequent but much bigger vacations.

Finclusion Group, a fintech that uses AI algorithms to provide financial services to African customers via an array of credit-centric products, has raised $20 million in debt and equity pre-Series A financing.

In its bid to traverse Africa, where opportunities abound as e-commerce and alternative credit sources grow, Lipa Later will have to contend with competition from South Africa’s Payflex (which was recently acquired by Australian BNPL Zip) and PayJustNow, and Nigeria’s PayQart and Carbon Zero.

The Bay Area startup wants to take a more blended solution to crypto lending with its protocol, building up capital pools and allowing fintech organizations outside the U.S. to make their case to lenders operating on the protocol and get access to funds while showing non-crypto collateral. Goldfinch is a crypto startup building a decentralized lending protocol that allows organizations to receive crypto loans without owning massive amounts of crypto already.