API Platform Company Bloom Credit Closes $13 Million

By Noah Long ● Oct 12, 2020
  • Bloom Credit — an API platform company that helps businesses integrate with credit bureaus for access to scores, monitoring, and furnishment products — announced it raised $13 million

Bloom Credit — an API platform company that helps businesses integrate with credit bureaus for access to scores, monitoring, and furnishment products — announced it has raised $13 million in a new round funding, $10 million led by Allegis NL, along with Resolute Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Commerce Ventures as well as a previously unannounced $3 million from angel investors including Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Sheel Mohnot and Jake Gibson, Acorns Founder Jeff Cruttenden, Marqeta Founder Jason Gardner, Vice Chair of Personal Capital Mark Goines, and former President of Prosper Ron Suber.

Launching credit products can be a challenging experience for companies. Despite solid penetration into the consumer financial services markets by companies like CashApp, others like Square have been unwilling to launch consumer credit products given the difficulty of building credit products like lending or credit monitoring for consumer use.

“It took years for Apple and Chime to launch their credit products, and very few companies can afford the time and money needed to set up all parts of a lending program,” said Matt Harris, co-founder and CEO of Bloom Credit. The investment in Bloom Credit “will go to accelerating the growth of our team to support demand for our products.”

Bloom Credit provides all bureau and score related products through a single and easy-to-use API that integrates with all three credit bureaus, helping grow a new class of credit products and services in a fraction of the time it has traditionally taken.

“Our partnership with Bloom Credit has been a major boost for TrueAccord’s direct-to-consumer product, Engage,” explained Nadav Samet, Co-Founder of TrueAccord and GM of Engage. “In a matter of a few weeks we were able to provide our consumers access to their credit reports and launch new financial products. Bloom Credit offered smooth onboarding, robust APIs, and an unmatched time to launch.”

Before the launch of Bloom Credit, developers did not have unified access to request or submit credit bureau data in a way that enables important applications which can improve consumers’ creditworthiness. And now technology and fintech businesses are able to leverage Bloom Credit’s API to streamline launching these use cases.

“The financial infrastructure market has enabled the explosive growth of neobanks and other advances in deposit-related personal finance,” noted Dan Rosen, Founding Partner of Commerce Ventures, an early investor in infrastructure pioneers like Marqeta and MX. “By unlocking access to the credit bureau ecosystem, Bloom Credit can enable developers to build the next wave of FinTech innovation by fostering better, fairer access to credit.”

“We are excited to partner with Bloom Credit as one of our first investments from our new fund,” added Stuart Doane of Allegis NL Capital. “The team has created a developer friendly API to build and scale credit products. Through their core engine, Bloom Credit is leading the way in equipping companies to offer added financial service functionalities for their customers.”

Bloom Credit also announced it is welcoming Erin Allard as COO. Allard was most recently VP and Head of Banking Operations and Product at Green Dot Corporation and previously held leadership positions at The Bancorp where she was responsible for a number of strategic initiatives, including credit-focused program sponsorship. Before the The Bancorp, Allard worked with Carnegie Mellon University’s award-winning Red Team, a consortium focused on autonomous vehicle development in coordination with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Allard had attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Navigating the landscape of leveraging credit data can be challenging for both new entrants and existing incumbents–something I’ve personally experienced in the past,” stated Erin Allard, Bloom Credit COO. “I am thrilled to partner with Matt, the team, and our investors at this exciting time in our journey to define and build Bloom Credit’s next chapter.”