Petal Launches Prism Data To Offer Its Credit Technology To Other Firms

Financial Technology (FinTech) company Petal — a startup that aims to shake up the world of credit cards — has launched a new company called Prism Data, which offers a “cash flow-based underwriting technology.” Prism Data will mean that Petal’s technology will be available to other companies.

The New York-based Petal bases credit decisions on an individual’s cash flow rather than standard industry metrics. Petal added, in a press release emailed to PYMNTS, that “WebBank is Prism Data’s first client with the Petal Card program.”

The release said that WebBank has used Prism Data’s approach and platform to help get “underserved consumers … access to hundreds of millions of dollars of credit.” Petal predicts that “the credit score of the future will be a complete, real-time, and holistic assessment of a consumer’s financial position, including their income, cash flows, and assets, in addition to debt and repayment history.”

“We believe financial providers need actionable insights—not raw data,” said Jason Gross, Petal and Prism CEO and co-founder. “Prism Data is the next great step in furthering Petal’s original mission to democratize access to credit, now by empowering other organizations to serve more customers, build better products, and make smarter decisions.”

The release said that “Prism Data takes in raw, consumer-permissioned bank account transactional data from financial providers and transforms it into useful information those providers can rely on, giving them greater insight into credit risk.”

Prism Data’s technology can be used by a financial provider to give credit to “consumers left out of the mainstream system,” the release said. “Prism Data is founded on the belief that open banking, and access to consumer-permissioned bank account transactional data, will change the way consumer finance works.”

Petal nailed down an additional $55 million in venture funding last September; Valar Ventures led the round.

Petal has “created a better and more modern credit experience, and a game-changing technology platform that’s well-matched to these times,” said James Fitzgerald, a founding partner with Valar.

That meant, at the time, that the FinTech had reeled in about $100 million all told in funding.