Credit Card Distribution Platform Extend Raises $11 Million

By Dan Anderson ● Apr 13, 2019

New York-based credit card distribution platform company Extend announced it has raised $11 million in Series A funding. This round of funding was led by Point72 Ventures and FinTech Collective. And there was additional participation from Reciprocal Ventures and strategic partner City National Bank.

Extend’s platform enables frictionless virtual credit card issuance for banks, corporations, and startups. The company is actively building core infrastructure for the future of payments and is transforming the $1.6 trillion U.S. corporate card industry. Plus the platform also offers a simple and secure virtual card payment option for the $864 billion U.S. gig economy.

Founded by CEO Andrew Jamison, CTO Danny Morrow, and COO/CMO Guillaume Bouvard, Extend integrates with Mastercard and Visa. And the company is also partnered with a half dozen strategic banks.

“Extend allows banks to keep up with the fast pace of the evolving payment landscape. Our cutting-edge capabilities sit seamlessly on top of existing bank card platforms, eliminating traditional technical hurdles to deployment.” said Jamison. “We lead the way for future financial innovation by serving as the layer between fintech startups and financial institutions, enabling them to better integrate their services for the mutual benefit of their customers.”

With this funding round, Extend is going to launch new features for its app and open APIs along with accelerating bank partnerships. And the company is going to recruit top-tier talent across engineering, marketing, and operations.

“Growing customer expectations are driving fintech startups and financial institutions to develop and deliver more dynamic, feature-rich digital payments experiences for their customers,” added Point72 Ventures partner Tripp Shriner. “Extend’s platform enables that innovation and we are thrilled to support the team as they execute on the large opportunity in front of them.”

Extend has partnerships with card issuers so that they can deliver advanced virtual card capabilities to clients. And this allows banks to accelerate innovation and meet client needs.

“As companies take increasing advantage of microservices and the gig economy to build their businesses, Extend is building the critical infrastructure that will redefine how corporate credit cards can be distributed to manage these new categories of expenses,” explained FinTech Collective co-founder and managing partner Gareth Jones. “As seen in recent news, virtual cards are an area which will continue to see major innovation this year.”

Using Extend, businesses are able to instantly send virtual credit cards to anyone — each with a unique spending limit and validity period. This enables customers to take control of spend, gaining visibility, and earning rewards.

“Customers across industries want easy-to-use solutions to their payment challenges, such as instantly providing access to a credit card without losing spend control or adding onerous processes. In Extend, we found both the mobile-based technology our clients need combined with a team of industry experts that we wanted to work with,” commented City National Bank’s Head of Enterprise Cards Vince Hruska.