UK-based Pillar has raised €15.6m to tackle credit access problems experiences by immigrants.
According to a report by EU Startups, the round was led by VC firms Global Founders Capital and Backed VC. A number of high profile angels also contributed to the raise, including the founders of WageStream, Peter Briffet and Portman Wills as well as the powerhouse investor and former VP and investor of AirBnB Oliver Jung.
Founded in 2021 by well-known Revolut alumni Ashutosh Bhatt and experienced FinTech CTO, Adam Lewis, Pillar’s technology will provide individuals moving to new countries with access to a variety of credit products in their new locations, that would have previously been unattainable.
With the current structure of the credit referencing market, a consumer cannot take their credit file from one country to another. As such, nearly all immigrants find themselves excluded from everyday products such as credit cards and loans. Those that do manage to access a product find themselves paying a disproportionately higher cost of borrowing.
At the heart of Pillar’s product is a proprietary Open Banking-led data and analytics engine that will power the global scalability of the platform. The launch is planned for Q3 in 2022.
This funding will be used to develop the platform further and build out the operational infrastructure to support the firm’s growth plans.
Ashutosh Bhatt, CEO of Pillar, said“Ever since I moved to the UK and found I couldn’t access any of the everyday products I had in India this has been a problem I have been passionate about solving. I arrived earning a good salary at Barclays and found I couldn’t even get an iPhone!
“Fourteen years later, and the world of credit still hasn’t changed, so we have set upon building a globally scalable platform that breaks down data silos and credit borders as well as solves this massive problem faced by financially secure people moving to a new country.”
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