Petal raises $35M, spins off data unit 'to bring credit scores into the 21st century'
Summary
The United States credit system as it exists today has been around for decades and many would argue its long been in need of an overhaul.In the meantime, a number of startups have emerged in recent years to offer consumers more options when obtaining credit.Petal is one such company. In fact, the delinquency rates for Pedal have actually been improving this year so far.And today, the company is announcing it has raised an additional $35 million in what Rosen is describing as strategic financing. Petal established Prism Data in 2021 with the goal of helping other businesses benefit from cash flow underwriting, Rosen said.We believed that cash flow underwriting had the potential to change the way consumer finance works across the board not only in credit cards, but everywhere that creditworthiness is evaluated, from personal and Buy-Now-Pay-Later loans to auto loans, mortgages and more, offered by anyone from the biggest banks to the smallest fintechs, he said.Prism, Rosen added, took the cash flow underwriting technology initially created by Petal, combined it with a lot more data and developed it into a set of new products dubbed CashScore v3 that was announced late last year. It was valued at about $800 million at the time of its last round in January of 2022 and has raised nearly $300 million in equity capital and more than $450 million in debt financing since its 2016 inception.Trish Mosconi, executive vice president and chief strategy corporate development officer at Synchrony, said in a statement that the bank has a deep history of using data to make informed lending decisions and create faster, seamless personalized customer experiences.She added: The Prism Data platform is innovative in providing differentiated consumer insights, enabling financial institutions to make more data-driven decisions. We look forward to exploring partnerships with Petal and Prism Data to help improve access to credit.Want more fintech news in your inbox?