Pier Raises $2.4 Million to Help Businesses Launch Credit Products

Pier has raised $2.4 million in an oversubscribed round to develop its technology that helps businesses launch credit products.

The company’s “Stripe for credit” solution automates every aspect of the credit lifecycle, including origination, underwriting, compliance and servicing, Jessica Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Pier, said in a Thursday (Jan. 11) post on LinkedIn.

“At Plaid, Stilt and J.P. Morgan, [Pier co-founder] Alex Hegevall Clarke and I saw firsthand how the credit industry struggle with fragmented solutions and high compliance hurdles,” Zhang said in the post. “With stringent federal and state regulations across 50 states, building an in-house tech stack capable of handling compliance becomes a time-consuming and expensive endeavor, often takes 9-12 months and costs millions.”

Pier aims to solve this problem with its technology, according to the post. The company’s recent round included investors Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, HorizonVC, ACME Capital, customers and strategic angels.

Pier’s solution enables companies to launch or automate their own credit products in weeks, rather than months, according to the company’s website.

With application programming interface (API)-driven, flexible modules, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution allows developers to get it up and running with a few lines of code, the website said.

Popular use cases for the solution include buy now, pay later (BNPL), credit builder, salary advance and commercial working capital, per the website.

“Companies and borrowers suffer because there is no dedicated modern credit and compliance solutions with a developer centric approach,” the Pier website said. “Our mission at Pier is to build the best-in-class tools for the next generation of innovators to improve access to credit.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that embedded finance can benefit businesses by promoting customer loyalty and engagement and creating new revenue opportunities.

In addition to driving direct revenue from the financial products themselves, the heightened engagement and loyalty they impart can increase consumers’ general spend with a given brand, according to “How Nonfinancial Brands Can Benefit From Offering Embedded Financial Services,” a PYMNTS and Galileo collaboration.

In another recent development in this space, Finnish embedded finance company Enfuce said in November that it raised $9.3 million to expand across key European markets.