Pockit, an all-in-one financial services app for UK consumers, lands $10M
Summary
Pockit, an app that offers financial services to people underserved by traditional banks, as the startup describes it, announced today that it raised $10 million in a funding round led by Puma Private Equity, with participation from The North East Development Capital Fund.With the tranche, which brings London-based Pockits total raised to around $50 million, the firm plans to enhance its credit building tools, introduce a buy now, pay later product and extend its platform into investments, insurance and savings accounts, founder and CEO Virraj Jatania says.This new fundraise stands us in good stead to weather future headwinds and continue to build products to meet the needs of the market, Jatania told TechCrunch in an email interview. After moving to London for university, I discovered that financial exclusion is an entrenched global problem, and decided to create a company to solve it.Pockit which only serves customers in the U.K., at least for now started as a prepaid card, but quickly grew to offer a number of financial services, including international money transfers, income advances and budgeting and cashback tools. Buy now, pay later apps encourage people to spend significantly more than they normally would, often charge fees for missing or late payments and can hurt a persons credit if they fail to pay.Jatania, though, stands by his assertion that Pockit has its users best interests in mind as well as its investors. But in the past two years, we have really focused on making our business model more profitable through a combination of improvements to revenue and reductions in cost to serve, he said. Jatania claims that the platform has processed around $5 billion in cash across over 73 million transactions.Part of the newly raised capital will go toward expanding Pockits team, which stands at close to 60 people.