Yonder Raises $77 Million to Expand Credit Offering Beyond London

British credit card startup Yonder has raised £62.5 million (about $77 million) to continue its growth.

The firm will invest £12.5 million in growing its team and £50 million in servicing credit lines to expand beyond London to another British city, Yonder Co-Founder and CEO Tim Chong said in a Monday (April 17) blog post.

“In non-investor terms, it means we’ve raised money we can now invest back into growing and improving Yonder,” Chong said in the post.

By growing the team, the firm aims to ship more product updates, add to its rewards program and meet its goals more quickly. Yonder is now hiring in marketing, operations, engineering and product, according to the post.

With the rest of the new capital, Yonder will expand to another city — which it has not selected — while also boosting its marketing to continue growing its customer base in London, the post said.

Yonder has also added a new “Send Points” feature to its rewards program that lets its customers send points to their friends, per the post.

This funding round comes about a year after Yonder announced it had raised £20 million (about $26 million at the time) in a seed round ahead of its launch.

Chong said when announcing the seed round in March 2022 that he founded Yonder after struggling to find a quality credit provider as an Australian in London, despite having a successful career and an excellent credit score.

“For too long, credit cards have taken advantage of consumers,” Chong said at the time. “Hidden fees, discriminatory credit scoring and rewards that belong in the 1990s, all in the interest of banks’ quarterly earnings.”

A month later, in April 2022, Yonder teamed up with open banking platform Yapily to provide consumers access to credit without needing a U.K. credit score.

With the customer’s consent, Yapily data enables Yonder to analyze a person’s bank account information for details like income and expenses, thereby providing a more holistic credit profile and improving access to credit for expats, immigrants, young people and others with little or no established credit history.