Mastercard invests in fintech Deserve in $50 million Series D fund raise
Mastercard has invested in the fintech Deserve, which aims to convert card programs into a service so that they can be launched quickly and reliably, in a Series D funding round for the company that helped it to raise $50 million.
The investors in this round included Mission Holdings, Goldman Sachs, Sallie Mae, and others. The company is expected to use these funds from Mastercard and others to expand its product features so that the industry can launch and grow its credit card programs through modern APIs which would, in turn, help the credit card industry to shift to digitalization and modernization.
“This investment validates the industry’s embrace of a digital-first approach,” said Kalpesh Kapadia, Deserve CEO and Co-Founder. “We have rebuilt the consumer’s entire credit card experience from the ground up, transforming the plastic credit card into software that delivers a superior digital experience and forever changes how we use credit cards to make payments, earn rewards and borrow money.”
The company also said that it would help its partners to go beyond verification of credit scores, income data, and other forms of KYC to give them access to more detailed data which would help them to improve approval rates and also credit performance as well.
Deserve is also one of the first companies to use Mastercard’s Digital First program which helps partners to provide instant credit safely and securely and with a digital experience that makes the process of onboarding very smooth.
Deserve has tried to design its platform with the latest generation of users in mind. The platform has a mobile-first approach as the young users spend most of their time on their mobiles and they are more comfortable in getting things done on them. So, the credit card application, approval, activation, and provision are all done through the mobile app within a very short period of time.
This platform can be used by partners who want to issue mobile cards and the company already has onboarded partners like Sallie Mae, BlockFi, and others. It is interesting to note that this platform is being used by BlockFi, a crypto company, to offer rewards to its users which shows the flexibility of the platform.
The company also has plans to offer additional products in the future that include Buy Now Pay Later, loans and others. The credit card industry does need some disruption and hence it is no surprise that Mastercard has chosen to place their bets on companies that plan to do the same.
