Uplift provides point-of-sale financing for travel by partnering with airlines, travel sites and vacation-package sellers to let consumers pay for trips in monthly installments. The company works with partners including United Airlines, Southwest, American Airlines, Allegiant Travel Company and Kayak, and uses a bank partner to underwrite loans. Uplift says it can make booking easier and reduce upfront cost for consumers, giving an example of a $2,000 Disneyland trip financed as roughly $189 per month over a year. Launched less than two years ago, the company is on track to originate nearly $1 billion in loans in 2019 and for some partners represents about 20% of their business. Uplift positions itself as the only lending company focused entirely on travel, distinguishing the product and technology from general retail BNPL players. The company plans to use new funding to add partners, roll out new services and grow the business while continuing to reach consumers through its travel partners rather than building a consumer marketplace. UpLift provides a travel-industry-focused financing solution under the UpLift Pay Monthly product, enabling consumers to pay for travel in monthly installments integrated into the booking process. The solution is designed to increase suppliers' booking values, extend booking windows and boost ancillary sales. UpLift Pay Monthly is available on the vacation sites of American Airlines Vacations, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines, and is coming soon to Vacation Express and Lufthansa German Airlines. The company is led by Founder and CEO Brian Barth and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. Financially, the company closed financings totaling $90M, which supports its product deployment and partner integrations. UpLift's core product is a Payment Marketing Platform that gives large online merchants real-time payment analytics to show cardholder attributes, expose revenue opportunities, increase conversion rates, and support performance monitoring. The platform is positioned to promote preferred payment types, boost usage of merchant co-branded cards, build brand loyalty, and propel channel shift across travel, e-commerce and nonprofit verticals. UpLift is easy to implement and compatible with all payment processors and works with merchants and third-party service providers. The company plans to use the new financing to expand platform applications for merchants and third-party providers, introduce UpLift into new verticals, and integrate additional data sources. Financially, UpLift completed an $8.2 million Series A financing led by IDG Ventures. The company was founded by Brian Barth and Stu Kelly, the co-founders of SideStep.

Total raised

$221M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Jan 2019