Self offers a Credit Builder Account and a secured Self Visa® Credit Card that lets customers build their security deposit in installments and does not require a credit check. The company focuses on enabling people to build credit while also accumulating savings. Self reports more than 500,000 consumers and $400 million in CD-secured loan originations. Led by founder and CEO James Garvey, the startup recently launched its Self Visa® Credit Card to expand its product suite. The company intends to use new funding to accelerate growth by hiring additional team members and investing in marketing and product development to improve customer success. Its product and go-to-market efforts center on lowering barriers to credit building for consumers. Self Lender is an Austin, Texas-based fintech offering Americans a way to build credit without credit cards by combining credit-builder loans with locked certificates of deposit (CDs). Customers receive a small credit-builder loan that is held in a CD while they make monthly repayments. Those repayments are reported to the credit bureaus, and once the loan is repaid the CD unlocks and the customer receives their saved funds. Led by CEO James Garvey, the company has provided over 175,000 people with credit-builder accounts. Self Lender raised $10m in a Series B financing led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Silverton Partners, Accion Venture Lab and others. The company intends to use the funds to expand the team, build new products and increase marketing efforts. Self Lender builds a credit‑builder loan product that holds a user's loan amount until the repayment period completes, then returns the principal while reporting payments to credit bureaus to help establish or repair credit. The startup’s product mimics credit‑builder loans sometimes offered by non‑profits but packages them as a consumer fintech offering. It is integrating with Austin Capital Bank, which enables the company to send data to all three major credit scoring firms. The firm says nearly 15,000 people are waiting for version two of its product and it intends to onboard the first 100 users onto its new credit builder loan program by September. Financially, Self Lender raised a $1.5M seed and has a total of $2.035M in disclosed capital to date. The company has participated in TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield and TechStars in its early lifecycle.

Total raised

$32M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Feb 2020