Credit solutions provider Petal has secured $3.6m in its seed funding round, to help fund the platform and product launch.
The funding round saw contributions from firms including Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Afore Capital, Rosecliff Ventures, Guild Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Story Ventures and Silicon Badia.
Petal, which had been in stealth for the past two years of development, is a credit card platform which uses machine learning to asses an individual, rather than credit scores. The machine learning platform does real-time analysis of the consumers financial record to assess the creditworthiness of new-to-credit consumers.
Through the technology, which has no fees, consumers are able to get safe and affordable credit, with higher limits and lower interest rates. The company partnered with VISA for the making of the credit card. Petal allows users to track spending and pay monthly bills.
Petal CEO and co-founder Jason Gross said, “Credit scores are notoriously unreliable and mischaracterise over 65m Americans, locking them out of the mainstream credit system. These consumers are disproportionately young, immigrant, minority and lower income – and predatory lenders, like payday lenders, have rushed in to fill the gap.
“The generation that came of age during the financial crisis continues to be underserved by the banking industry, and without new solutions, will be increasingly disadvantaged as a result. Credit access is a critical building block for financial stability and homeownership.”
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