Bengaluru-based credit card service startup Hyperface has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Seed funding round from Binny Bansal's 021 Capital and other investors, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The funding round saw participation from angel investors Varun Mittal (EY global fintech leader), Ashish Sharma (Chief Executive Officer of Innoven), Chaitra Chidanand (Co-founder of SALT), Moses Lo (Founder and CEO of Xendit), Aldi Haryopratomo (Ex- CEO of GoPay); Harsh Jain (Founder of Groww), Abhinay Peddisetty and Chinmay Chauhan (founders of Indonesia-based Bukuwarung), among others.
The startup plans to utilise the funds for team expansion, product development, expansion into the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) segment, and to pursue strategic initiatives for enhancing user experience, the statement said.
Founded in 2021 by R.V. Ramanathan, ex-Chief Technology Officer of Juspay and banker-turned-entrepreneur Aishwarya Jaishankar, the startup helps businesses, brands and others, tailor credit card products to their own unique customer base, it said.
Hyperface claims to simplify launching credit cards and BNPL products for fintech companies, e-commerce firms and neobanks that want to embed financial products into their mobile apps. Its BNPL stack allows any lending technology company to issue a BNPL card to their customers with custom-billing frequency and pricing. The start-up enables fintech companies to set up a programme in four-eight weeks instead of the typical 18-24 months.
“Our aim is to reinvent and improve access to credit cards for brands by working with a bank issuer to provide simple card issuance and bespoke digital credit programmes for customers of those brands. Currently, this is a complex and lengthy process. There has been significant advancement in technology which will radically simplify this,” said Ramanathan.
In October, Hyperface raised funds from Kunal Shah of CRED, Better Capital and GFC. Their early investors included founders and executives of Tracxn, Flipkart, Rippling, ShopUp and Nium.
In similar deals, fintech start-up Slice, operated by GaragePrenuers Internet Pvt. Ltd., raised $220 million (around Rs 1673 crore) as part of its latest Series B fundraise led by New York-based investment firms Tiger Global and Insight Partners. The fundraise values Slice at a little over $1 billion, making it the 41st Indian startup to achieve unicorn status this year.
Earlier this month, Rupifi Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which offers embedded lending solutions to business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces, raised venture debt from Trifecta Capital.
Consumer credit provider Simpl raised $40 million (around Rs 304 crore) as a part of its Series B round, led by Valar Ventures and IA Ventures.