Petal Raises $30 Million in Series B Funding, Led by Valar Ventures
New investment signals that fintech change is coming in credit cards
NEW YORK, Jan. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Petal, a new kind of credit card company built to help people financially succeed, today announced that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding.
This investment was led by Valar Ventures, a New York-based venture capital fund known for its successful investments in the financial technology space, including innovative consumer businesses N26, TransferWise and Stash, among others. This is Petal's second investment from Valar, which was also the lead investor in Petal's Series A funding round.
As part of this funding round, Greyhound Capital is joining as a new institutional investor in Petal. The company's existing institutional investors also participated in this latest round; these investors include Third Prime Capital, Rosecliff Ventures, Story Ventures, RiverPark Ventures and Afore Capital.
Petal also announced the appointment of two seasoned executives to its senior leadership team: Parris Sanz, a longtime senior executive with CAN Capital, who is joining as Petal's General Counsel, and Tom Greco, former SVP of Customer Operations at GreenSky, who is joining as Petal's VP of Customer Operations.
Petal wants to make safe and affordable credit accessible to everyone, even if they have no credit score or prior experience with credit. The company uses better technology to help create the most advanced, intuitive, and user-friendly credit cards on the planet, designed from the ground up to help people financially succeed.
"Over the past two years, we've focused on building both an amazing team and a special product," said Jason Gross, Petal's Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder. "Now, with new funding and new leaders onboard we're ready to meaningfully scale our business and team. We're thankful for the support of our investors and partners, and look forward to helping millions of people build credit with Petal."
"We look to double down where our companies are succeeding," said Andrew McCormack, a founding partner with Valar Ventures. "The quality of talent that Petal has acquired, their devotion to the mission of financial fairness and transparency, and the incredible market reception since launch made us very excited to grow our investment in Petal."
The first Petal product, the Petal Visa card, launched in October. Petal helps people build credit, not debt, offering an experience with no fees or financial traps. Petal is one of the only credit cards in the U.S. with no overdraft fee, late fee, international fee, annual fee, or any other kind of fee.
Petal uses modern technology—and a bit of common sense—to help more people qualify. Petal helps measure objective components of each individual's creditworthiness that aren't typically considered in a credit approval decision, like how much an individual actually makes, saves and spends over time, and the bills they pay each month. This gives a more accurate and precise understanding of how much someone can safely afford to borrow, beyond what is available in a traditional credit report.
This approach allows the Petal card to serve consumers that most banks turn away, and offer lower interest rates and higher lines of credit without charging fees—even if those consumers don't (yet) have a credit score.
To date, Petal has raised more than $80 million in equity and debt financing from venture capitalists, financial institutions and investment banks. This includes $46.6 million in equity funding raised across Petal's seed, Series A and Series B rounds of funding, and $34 million in debt financing raised to support the initial public rollout of the Petal Visa card.
ABOUT VALAR VENTURES:
Valar is a New York-based venture firm founded by Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald and Peter Thiel. Valar's core thesis is that an increasing number of transformative technology companies are being started outside of Silicon Valley, and that the founders of those companies benefit from having a partner that understands their unique challenges and opportunities and can help them achieve optimal growth. For more information, please visit: http://www.valar.com.
ABOUT PETAL:
Petal is a new kind of credit card company built to help people financially succeed (http://www.petalcard.com). Petal has a diverse and seasoned team, with experience at leading finance and technology companies, such as Google, Amazon, Square, WeWork, CitiBank, Capital One, American Express and Chase. Petal is based in New York City and the Petal credit card is issued by WebBank, Member FDIC.
SOURCE Petal
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