U.S. Fintech Petal Secures $30 Million Through Series B Funding Round Led By Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures

Petal, a credit card startup pioneering “Cashflow Underwriting” as an alternative to traditional credit scoring, secured $30 million through its Series B funding round, which was reportedly led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. This news comes just one year after Valar Venture led Petal’s $13 million Series A round. As previously reported, Petal was founded in 2016 and is looking to build a different kind of financial services company with a mission to make safe and affordable credit accessible to everyone. The startup stated:

“Petal is a credit card company built to help people succeed financially. Our credit card is designed with no fees (variable APRs range from 15.24-26.24%), no financial traps and doesn’t require you to have had any prior experience with credit. Our goal is to help Americans everywhere start building credit. Tens of millions of Americans have no credit score at all, and millions more have short credit histories that may not tell the whole story. That’s a problem since building credit is a necessity for many of life’s most important milestones, like buying your first car, starting a small business, or purchasing a home. And bad credit can cost as much as $250,000 over the course of your lifetime (in fees, interest and other charges).”

According to Forbes, Greyhound Capital, Third Prime Capital, Rosecliff Ventures, Story Ventures, RiverPark Ventures, and Afore Capital also participated in the latest funding round. The media outlet also reported that to date, Petal has raised more than $80 million in equity and debt financing including a $3.6 million seed round, $43 million in Series A and Series B rounds of funding and $34 million in debt financing to support the rollout of its Petal Visa card last year.