Goldman Bets on “Card-As-A-Service” & Real Estate Tech Heats Up
/It was a busy week in funding:
Goldman Sachs bet big on fintech firm Deserve, leading a $50-million Series C round this week that also featured Sallie Mae, Accel, Aspect Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, and Mission Holdings.
Deserve uses machine learning and alternative data to provide millennials, Gen Zs, and immigrants access to credit products. It also offers a “card-as-a-service” platform that enables businesses, brands, and others to tailor credit card products to their own unique customer bases.
The company’s cloud and API-based Deserve Credit Platform promises partners the ability to set up a program in as little as 90 days, instead of the typical 18 to 24 months.
“The future of consumer banking is digital – we’re past legacy infrastructure and onto modern technology, like our digital-first, mobile-centric, and API driven platform," said Kalpesh Kapadia, CEO and Co-Founder of Deserve. “Without legacy systems holding the industry back, I think plastic cards will become obsolete, in the same way Netflix went from sending DVDs in the mail to offering digital content. Goldman Sachs recognizes in Deserve an opportunity to invest in and help shape that digital future of banking.”
We also saw several big real estate tech deals:
Goldman (yup, them again) invested $40 million in lease accounting software start-up LeaseQuery
PeerStreet, a platform for investing in real estate backed loans, raised $60 million in Series C funding
Snapdocs, a San Francisco-based home mortgage closing platform, raised $25 million in Series B funding
Vacasa, a vacation rental management company, raised a whopping $319 million in a funding round led by Silver Lake
