Cred founder Kunal Shah, Better Capital and GFC (Global Founders Capital), along with early investors have invested $1.3 million in Bengaluru-based credit card service startup Hyperface.
“Along with early investors that include founders and executives of Tracxn, Flipkart, Rippling, ShopUp and Nium, the funding raised by Hyperface is a total of $1.3 million,” the firm said.
The funding received will be used to strengthen the tech platform, launch card programmes, grow the team and accelerate growth.
Hyperface simplifies launching credit card products for fintech companies, e-commerce firms and neobanks that want to embed financial products into their mobile apps.
Started in February this year, Hyperface was founded by R.V. Ramanathan, ex-CTO of Juspay and banker-turned-entrepreneur Aishwarya Jaishankar.
"Our mission is to reinvent, simplify and improve access to credit cards by enabling fintech companies to partner with banks in a 10x more productive way. I am extremely glad and grateful to have found support from the right people in the fintech ecosystem," said Ramanathan, founder and CEO at Hyperface.
Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital said, “There is currently an unprecedented need for a partner who can help bridge the gap between financial institutions and fintech companies who wish to issue a credit card product for their customers. Providing fintechs with a flexible, fast-to-integrate, and scalable solution will enable them to power and execute unique credit card programs…”
Better Capital is an early-stage venture capital fund which has backed fintech firms such as Rupeek, Open, Jupiter and others.
Rocket Internet's VC fund GFC (formerly known as European Founders Fund GmbH) is Berlin-based fund that has recently invested in Bengaluru-based profile building platform CareerLabs.
Former Freecharge founder Shah started Cred in 2018. Cred is a members-only app that lets users pay credit card bills and rewards them in the form of credit coins, which can be redeemed across partner businesses including CureFit, Ixigo, BookMyShow and FreshMenu. This also gives the app an insight into customer spends, which can be used for cross-selling and up-selling products.
Hyperface
Hyperface’s API-first and platform-based approach enables fintech companies to set up a programme in 4-8 weeks instead of the typical 18-24 months. Further, their APIs allow fintechs to manage the entire customer experience across the card lifecycle, create custom loyalty programs and drive customer engagement in a variety of ways.
As per industry estimates, credit card penetration continues to be low with only 3 credit cards for every 100 people in India. As of July 2021, nearly 63 million credit cards were in use in India, compared to nearly 900 million debit cards in circulation, the company said.
"Credit cards are slated to grow 10x in India. This huge wave of growth will emerge from fintech companies in partnership with banks. Ram and Aishwarya are passionate about enabling this trend by building a solid platform, with customizable features for brands to deliver best-in-class adaptive experiences to their customers. I am very excited to be a part of their journey having supported them from day one," said Sayali Karanjkar, founder of Paysense, an active angel investor in fintech companies.