Credit Builder acts like a reverse-loan, similar to that offered by Loqbox, with 12 monthly repayments that Monese locks away when you initiate the loan, meaning there’s no risk of the borrower defaulting.

At the end of the period, all the money is returned to the customer, leading some to dub it a ‘savings-loan’.

Read more: AltFi

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Then, you just have the one loan to pay off. You can reduce the total costs of your debt, get a lower interest rate, and simplify your debt payments all at the same time. But is a personal loan the best form of consolidation? That depends on the amount of debt you have, your goals, and what you can do. Here are a few things you might want to try in order to figure out what is best for your situation.

Make A List

The first thing you should do is sit down and take a hard look at your finances. You need to make a list of your credit cards and the balances they have on them. You should also list their interest rates and the monthly payments you have to make. Once you have a handle on how much debt there really is, you are closer to being able to make a decision.

You will also want to include a list of your assets because some loans might want to know about those or might use something you own as collateral. If you have equity in your home, note that. If you own a vehicle and don’t have debt on it, that’s another thing to list. You may also have retirement accounts or something of that sort to take note of on the list in case you need it.

Figure Out What You Can Afford

You know how much you make each month and how much your other bills are. How much can you easily afford to pay on your debt? If you are struggling to cover the credit cards now, a credit card debt consolidationmay be able to help you with that. But if you have too much debt, you might not be able to afford the payments even if you do consolidate. You need to know what you can afford before you move forward in any direction.

Check Out Your Credit Score

Knowing your credit score will help you to track your progress. It can also help you understand what options are going to be available to you. If you have poor credit, for example, you probably aren’t going to be able to get a bank loan–at least not one with good interest rates.

 If that is the case, you might want to look into other financial lenders, perhaps that have unsecured loans, to help you get what you need to consolidate. It’s also good to know where your credit score is now so that whatever steps you take, you can watch to ensure that they have a positive impact on the score.

The best form of credit card debt consolidation is going to depend on your needs and your capabilities. If you can afford payments, consolidating the cards into one personal loan can be a great option. If that’s not affordable to you, there are other choices you will have to look into. Once you have a handle on what you owe and what you have, it’s easier to make a decision one way or the other.

The next step is to take advice from financial professionals to heart. You can lay out your lists to them and talk through the options. They will be able to tell you what choices are out there for credit card debt consolidationand what might work best for you, given your situation. Listen to their advice and take it seriously as it could impact your financial status in the future as you move toward a debt-free life.

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Petal’s  core differentiation is that it looks at the cash flow of potential borrowers rather than traditional credit scores to assess creditworthiness, helping to identify underbanked users who have the ability to be trusted with a credit card, but lack the formal statistics to prove it.

Read more: TechCrunch

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Digital Banking is here to stay, digital support offers a greater and better service (24/7), a total interaction capacity, access from different devices, payment security, comfort, speed and movement management. It has known how to adapt to the new habits of customers and adopt new working methods, reorient itself and offer exclusive services that drive and foster competition, such as experiences thanks to the automation of processes when launching personalized digital products and services, focusing on the client, a priority objective. Digital financial operations have multiplied exponentially and, with it, the risks. It is unapproachable to give you a physical answer, by time, volume and risk. The development of software and the use of new technologies allow to manage the exponential volume of risks in a precise and agile way, giving an efficient and personalized response to the client.

The COVID-19 pandemic, more than a disruptive process in the financial sector, has been an accelerometer by activating investment in digitization. In fact, it has been an unrivaled investment boost, whose aim has been oriented towards the new normal of strengthening customer service, offering personalized service, adapting supply to demand and anticipating their needs to be competitive. “It has gone from saying to fact, from talking about digitization to using it as part of the clear strategy of the entities,” says GDS Modellica CEO Antonio García Rouco.

Digital Banking services represent an opportunity to expand the financial niche, hand in hand with digital transformation, developing customer-focused virtual channels and services. GDS Modellica, aware of the new needs of the sector, has developed flexible solutions that enable financial companies to create and improve strategies in a faster, more convenient and personalized way, maintain compliance within a very strict regulatory environment, in addition to helping them in the acceleration of the business cycle, adapting it both to the granting of loans and loan proposals, always with maximum security, with agile and efficient decisions after analyzing risk management.

GDS Modellica covers the entire risk cycle from admission, client management, fraud, collection and finally regulation with specific solutions based on four comprehensive pillars ranging from data analytics, consulting, 

Its decision management process is applied to multiple products, for this it performs calculations, executes formulas and models, according to the variables to make safe decisions. The bank itself draws its risk strategy and puts the decision-making gear into operation through internal tools and architecture.

Transforming the information that arrives and is stored into knowledge and treating it to provide each client with a single-channel experience is key to being more competitive, making risk-free decisions and achieving a successful business trajectory.

GDS MODELLICA:

GDS Modellica, with a worldwide presence, is a credit risk management software company. He has successfully collaborated with hundreds of financial institutions, minorities, insurance companies and various organizations in more than 36 countries for more than 15 years. The entity provides decision software and analytical technology that help companies manage risk processes, combat fraud and generate profitable relationships with their clients. https://www.gdsmodellica.com

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CredoLab, a leading developer of bank-grade digital credit scorecards based on smartphone metadata, has secured USD 7 million in its Series A round funding led by GBG, the global specialist in Identity Data Intelligence.

In addition to GBG, the round saw participation from Walden International, an existing investor, and Access VC among other new investors.

CredoLab develops bank-grade digital scorecards for banks, lenders, e-commerce, travel, ride-hailing, e-wallets, insurance, and retail companies; or essentially for any business that needs to make better credit decisions. CredoLab uses the best source of privacy-consented, and permissioned data: smartphone and web metadata to help its clients to expand the market share and decrease their cost of risk in real time. Since its inception in 2016, CredoLab has powered almost USD 2 billion in loans issued by 70+ clients across 20+ countries. 

“Despite the obvious slowdown caused by COVID-19, we have already seen a significant shift from physical originations to digital ones and an increased appetite in using alternative sources of data” said Peter Barcak, CEO & Founder of CredoLab. “CredoLab has continued to provide a stable behavioural score that has kept its predictive power even in the presence of payment holidays when lenders can’t rely on credit bureau scores. We have become an essential part of the recovery strategies of our clients as they restart lending in the post-COVID-19 environment in a risk-controlled way.”

Chris Clark, Chief Executive, GBG said: “GBG’s fraud and compliance solution allows financial institutions to onboard and transact with their customers quickly, safely, and securely. We have experienced first-hand CredoLab’s capabilities from our ongoing commercial partnership. The company’s AI-based proprietary technology will complement our existing offering but also provide critical behavioural risk reference data from good customers that are financially excluded.”  

“We are ecstatic to be associated with GBG, Walden International, and Access VC who have shown great confidence in our team, our product, and our cause by backing us in our latest round of funding.” Barcak said.

With the objective of democratising credit scoring, CredoLab plans to use this investment to further enhance its product features and expand the understanding of customers’ digital risk DNA. In addition to strengthening its alternative credit core scoring algorithm, CredoScore, the Singapore-based FinTech company will also push the adoption of its solutions in other industries at the intersection with financial services and help them grow faster, post-pandemic. 

CredoLab will focus on consolidating its leadership in Southeast Asia and expanding its market reach in key countries across Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Elaborating further, Peter Barcak said, “Last year we had some great names come on board in Brazil, India, South Africa, and Nigeria. In the next 12 months, with more resources at hand, we intend to expand our sales network and further target non-banking financial institutions.”

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The streets of Koramangala, one of the largest neighborhoods in Bangalore, are plastered with hoardings and banners of digital payment services. Every few steps, you find a bank, and offices of fintech startups.

But when Mohammed Nayeem wanted to get a credit card, he realized his options were limited. He applied for a credit card at RBL Bank, a Mumbai-headquartered bank that has been around for more than 70 years. In the days that followed, he answered many of their questions over phone calls and provided them with a number of documents.

The calls kept coming, but the card never did.

Nayeem works as a freelance interior designer and earns an average of $580 each month, he told TechCrunch in an interview last year. Though this is more than enough for most banks in the nation to issue him a credit card, the fact that he does not have a traditional kind of job was off-putting to all of them.

Tens of millions of people like Nayeem in India today can’t get a credit card. They have lived much of their lives on debit cards and with little to no credit score. There are close to 1 billion debit cards in use in India today, but only about 50 million credit cards in circulation. Even as scores of startups today are trying to bridge this gap, very few are serving the young demographic.

Eventually, Nayeem came across a startup called Slice, which provided him with a Slice Card that for all intents and purposes, serves as a credit card. For more than a year now, he has been using Slice’s offering and his experience has been “wonderful,” he told TechCrunch.

Slice offers a prepaid card that comes with a pre-approved credit line, Rajan Bajaj, co-founder and CEO of the four-year-old startup, told TechCrunch in an interview. The Koramangala-headquartered startup focuses on people like Nayeem — young demography comprising mostly of students, freelancers, startup employees and blue-collar workers.

Bajaj said more than 250,000 customers use Slice’s card today. In the course of a month, an average user performs about 10 transactions to digital services such as Swiggy and music apps and spends about Rs 10,000 ($132). As users spend more, Slice increases their monthly limit to up to Rs 100,000 ($1,320).

But giving these users a card is only part of the value proposition. The biggest attraction perhaps for users is that they are able to build credit scores, which would eventually make them eligible for better credit cards from other firms and banks, and enable them to secure loans for various purposes. In about six months with Slice, most users have a credit score of more than 700, said Bajaj.

The startup also offers users the ability to secure small sachet of loan products and pay them at zero-cost interest and track their expenses.

On Thursday, Slice announced it had raised $6 million in a pre-Series B financing round. The round was led by Japan-based Gunosy,  while the U.S.-headquartered EMVC, Kunal Shah of CRED, Better Capital, and existing investor Singapore-headquartered Das Capital participated in it. It also counts Blume Ventures, Traxcn Labs, and China’s Finup among its investors.

Bajaj said Slice plans to deploy the fresh capital to expand its reach. It plans to reach 500,000 young customers in the next one year.

Raising capital at the height of a global pandemic is a testament to Slice’s technology to determine the creditworthiness of customers and its underwriting methodology, he said. But Bajaj cautioned that he expects to see slightly more number of defaults in the coming months due to local conditions and new rules.

But for Slice, formerly known as SlicePay, that figure would still remain below 5%, and the startup, which has been profitable since last year, is well positioned to navigate it.

“We believe slice has a sustainable advantage as it has decoded young credit users’ demands and has built a deep understanding of credit risk and low-cost distribution using technology,” said Yuki Maniwa, Director of Gunosy, in a statement.

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This morning Upgrade, a credit-focused fintech startup, announced that it has raised a $40 million Series D round that the company says gives it a $1 billion valuation. The Upgrade  round slots neatly into a few trends TechCrunch has noted in recent quarters, including fintech startups raising at new, higher valuations, and some startups seeing sharp valuation growth on the back of comparatively modest raises.

Other startups that have steeply repriced on small investments, in percentage terms, include Notion more than doubling its valuation to $2 billion earlier this year off a $50 million investment.

In its Series D, Upgrade managed to, ahem, update its valuation from $500 million set during its 2018 Series C. Santander InnoVentures, the CVC associated with the banking giant Santander, led the latest investment.

Upgrades

Given the sheer deluge of fintech news in the last few years, you’re forgiven if Upgrade slipped through your nets. The company is a fintech startup with a credit-focus today, though it intends to add more neobank-like tooling — digital checking accounts, and so forth — in Q3. So, instead of starting with a checking-and-savings structure like so many neobanks, Upgrade kicked off with personal loans and credit cards.

The result of that focus, to hear Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche tell it, is that the company has managed to quickly scale its revenue base. This helps explain why the company raised so little money in its Series D; the company told TechCrunch it is currently on a $100 million run rate (month12, not quarter4) and is cash-flow positive.

On that note, how Upgrade managed to secure capital during the current, less certain era is somewhat clear from its growth story. (Growth, as we keep seeing, is still something VCs want to pour capital into.) According to Laplanche, Upgrade rang up $60 million in revenue in 2019 and expects $160 million this year. That’s nearly a tripling from an eight-figure base in a year — not bad at all.

If Laplanche’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was the founder and former CEO of peer-to-peer fintech company LendingClub, which went public in December of 2014. Laplanche ran afoul of regulators during his tenure, leading to his ouster; he founded Upgrade after leaving LendingClub.

Upgrade has a different philosophy than some credit card providers, in the view of its CEO. “Banks have an incentive to keep customers in debt as long as possible,” Laplanche said during an interview with TechCrunch. Upgrade, in contrast, offers lower rates — cards starting at 6.9%, under what the CEO described as a market-normal entry rate of 12% to 13% — and set repayment periods for debts so that customers don’t wind up in a credit cycle that never ends, sapping them of financial health.

The model and Upgrade’s other products, like personal loans, have proved popular, by its own reckoning. The startup told TechCrunch that ten million individuals have applied for credit from the company. That demand has led to rising loan volume — Upgrade expects to do $3 billion in lending this year, including $2 billion in personal loans and $1 billion in credit card volume, it said — and a growing user base.

That user base is part of why the startup is targeting banking in the near future. And that move is why it needed money. Let’s explore.

Banking

The startup’s move into banking makes a bit of sense, given that it already has customers. One constant in the fintech world is the offering of more services to existing customers, helping drive up their lifetime value (LTV) and thus making their cost to acquire (CAC) more palatable.

Upgrade is just doing this normal move in reverse. Instead of starting with checking accounts and debit cards, which yield regular interchange incomes, it started in higher-margin credit and is moving into the lower-profit consumer banking world next. Q3, according to Laplanche, is when we should expect to see more from the company on this front.

Which brings us to why Upgrade raised at all. Per its CEO, the company might run cash-flow negative for six to nine months after the launch of its banking tools. Upgrade could roll out the new services slowly, he said, but decided instead to raise external capital and be more aggressive.

Fair enough.

Upgrade is an interesting startup story and a comeback tale of sorts for Laplanche. More as we have it.

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Open banking startups CreditKudos has raised £5 million in a Series A funding round led by AlbionVC, according to a report. AlbionVC was joined by a group of Fintech angels, including Christian Faes of LendInvest, as well as Entrepreneur First, TriplePoint, Plug & Play Ventures, and Ascension Ventures’ Fair by Design fund.

CreditKudos is a Fintech that seeks to “fix” traditional credit scoring.  One of the founders experienced a situation where after working in the US for several years, he returned to the UK and was confronted with a “thin credit file.” This painful truth and the reality that something was broken in the system spurred him on to launch CreditKudos – a “challenger credit bureau.”

An example of CreditKudos’ service includes the recently announced “Income Stability Scores.” This feature leverages open banking requirements to streamline the loan underwriting process. It is also emblematic of what open banking can accomplish.

CEO and co-founder Freddy Kelly explained to TechCrunch what they are attempting to accomplish:

“Traditionally, credit scores are calculated based on past borrowing history and a few other simple measures such as being on the electoral roll and frequency of credit applications. These existing scores are a very weak signal of financial health as they don’t consider an individual’s day-to-day income and expenditure. Because of this, many borrowers are forced to pay higher interest rates or are rejected entirely.”

Of course, CreditKudos has tons of competitors in well-established names that are entrenched within the traditional banking system. But CreditKudos service will improve the credit rating process for everyone, including the underbanked, as it sets a higher bar.

Last November,  Andy Sleigh, COO of ClearScore – a company that signed up to use the CreditKudos service, said that a large proportion of the UK population is underserved by financial institutions and still held hostage by their circumstances. By partnering with Credit Kudos, they are able to change this paradigm:

“By providing lenders with more information via our open banking integration to improve their decisioning process and affordability assessments, we will open up the credit market to thousands of underserved users who have previously been rejected. Plus, our research has shown that using open banking to open up lending to just 5% of ClearScore’s underserved population would result in an additional £30 million in lending per month. This could grow significantly in the following months and years as these users begin to use further forms of credit,” stated Sleigh.

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Monzo consumers will be able to see their credit score for the first time, offering the service free of charge.

The credit score facility will be rolled out over the next few months starting in March and Monzo customers will be able to see their score through the Monzo app, Monzo said in a blog posting.

Monzo is the first bank to offer the service free of charge.

Customers of the digital bank will be able to see why their credit score has gone up and down and it will also offer advice on how credit scores can be improved and maintained.

Monzo will hope the tool will help it pinch market share from the likes of Experian and Equifax.

“You’ll be able to see your score in just a few taps – no need to fill out any long forms. We’ll explain what your score could mean, in plain English, and we’ll give you some tips on what you could do to improve or maintain it, Monzo said.

Monzo uses credit score data from credit reference agencies TransUnion and Experian to help it makes decisions about who it can lend to.

The score users will see in the app comes via data from TransUnion.

By comparison, Barclays has a similar credit score tool which costs users £5.

Monzo added: “We’ll show you your score, what it actually means, and give you tips that could help you improve it.”

“Credit scores are great to give you a general sense of how lenders see you. A low score could mean less access to things like credit cards or mortgages, and a high score means you could get better deals and access to more money.”

“So it’s definitely worth keeping a close eye on your score – and doing what you can to try and improve it.”

Last week, Monzo said it was looking to recruit around 500 staff in the year ahead.

In October last year, peer-to-peer lender Zopa launched a tool which it says will simplify the credit worthiness process and help customers get access to cheaper credit.

Zopa launched the tool, called Borrowing Power, as it said that lending decisions and credit worthiness have been “shrouded in mystery” for too long.

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There’s a growing amount of activity to bank and service immigrant and migrant customers. There are 44 million immigrants in the US and globally, this population represents some $1.3 trillion in wages and $900 billion in spending power annually. But this market is still widely underserved.

It’s generally hard for someone new to a country to open a bank account. Rules can be arcane and technical, while language can also be an issue. There are frequently problems around identification — like what form of government-issued IDs are acceptable to open an account — and residency requirements — like history of utility bills, for example. 

There’s an opportunity to connect a big chunk of people to the financial system. All kinds of research show the wealth effects of having access to modern financial products and services. 

New fintech startups see an opportunity to do well by doing good. They’re working to build big companies servicing immigrant and migrant communities that need everything from a core bank account to money transfer services. 

Tearsheet thought it was a good time to look at who’s doing what in the U.S. when it comes to banking immigrants.

Passbook by Remitly: Money transfer firm Remitly recently launched Passbook, a banking product that targets immigrants. Users can sign up for a bank account and a Visa debit card with no foreign transaction fees — without having to provide a Social Security number. Passbook users will also be able to use Remitly’s remittance service at preferred pricing terms. Remitly has raised over $420 million to build out international money transfer services for immigrant populations.

Transferwise: The leading international money transfer firm has built a business off of helping people move money across borders quickly and cheaply. Transferwise users in the US now have access to a debit card for their Borderless accounts, which enables them to store, send, and receive foreign funds — much like a bank account. The fintech firm is also increasingly working with banks to provide similar functionality to their clients.

Nova Credit: Nova Credit ports over international credit history to help new immigrants access the US financial system. The company recently scored a partnership with American Express to provide expats and immigrants in the US with translations of their foreign credit scores to US standards.

Petal: Petal is one of the few credit cards that doesn’t require a credit score for new applicants. It uses algorithms that look at alternative data to establish creditworthiness. The card is fee-free and helps holders build up their credit scores over time.

Credit Stacks: The Credit Stacks Mastercard is designed for expats moving the U.S. People new to life in the States can apply for a card 60 days before they arrive, so the card is waiting for them. The card also helps them establish and build a credit history in the U.S.

Majority: Majority is a recently-launched challenger bank for migrants. It offers an FDIC-backed account with a Visa debit card. Account holders get money transfers and international calls for free. The company charges $5 per month for membership.

Deserve: Deserve‘s growth trajectory began when it carved out a niche providing credit cards to foreign students. The company has expanded its product suite, including providing credit cards as a service. Its EDU product, which is designed for students, offers Amazon Prime Student free for a year and a $0 annual fee. No social security number is required to apply.

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