Petal Raises $35M in Funding

Petal

Petal, a New York- and Richmond, VA-based credit card and financial technology company, raised $35M in funding.

The round was led by Valar Ventures and joined by Story Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, and RiverPark Ventures, among others. The funding included strategic investments from Synchrony and Samsung Next.

This new investment will be split between Petal and Prism Data, a spun off its B2B-focused data infrastructure and analytics subsidiary.

Led by CEO Jason Rosen, Petal is a credit card company which has pioneered cash flow underwriting, as an alternative to traditional credit scores, to make credit more accessible. It offers a modern digital experience that encourages members to build credit, avoid debt, and spend responsibly.

To date, nearly 400,000 consumers have been approved for a Petal credit card, including more than 100,000 new cards approved in 2022. Petal generated more than $80 million in annualized revenue last year, putting the company on a path to reach profitability in 2024.

The company is based in New York, NY, and Richmond, VA. Petal credit cards are issued by WebBank.

This spinoff results in two independent, financial technology companies that leverage cash flow underwriting and consumer-authorized financial information—sometimes referred to as “open banking data”—to provide products that expand consumer access to financial services.

Prism Data’s open banking infrastructure and analytics platform helps clients improve underwriting capabilities, minimize first-party fraud, and better manage servicing of their portfolios. Prism has seen significant traction since its launch, signing more than a dozen clients and partners and completing over two dozen successful pilots, including with some of the country’s largest banks. To date, Prism’s CashScore has been used to inform nearly $2 billion in real-world credit originations for hundreds of thousands of consumers.

In December 2022, Prism announced CashScore v3, a consortium-based cash flow underwriting model, built using millions of anonymized, consumer-permissioned records from a variety of different credit providers, credit products and customer segments. Similar to traditional credit models like FICO or VantageScore, Prism’s CashScore v3 offers lenders a predictive tool they can use off-the-shelf to more precisely assess credit risk in any consumer context—from credit cards and personal loans to mortgages and auto loans, among others.

FinSMEs

10/05/2023