Today, we’re excited to announce Unit has raised a $100 million Series C led by Jeff Horing of Insight Partners, at a $1.2 billion valuation. Joining Insight are existing investors Accel, Better Tomorrow Ventures, and Flourish, as well as new investors Stepstone, Moving Capital (Uber alumni syndicate), and prominent fintech angels.

We designed Unit to be the simple and robust platform to empower the next generation of fintech builders. Since launch, we’ve grown to serve 140+ customers, from public companies to early-stage startups. The list includes AngelList, Invoice2Go, Homebase, HoneyBook, Roofstock, and many more. Our customers have been able to take advantage of our unique approach—a modern tech stack built on a native ledger, streamlined compliance, and built-in bank relationships—to launch in weeks.

In the last six months, we’ve seen deposits held at our bank partners grow 10x and cross $100 million. We’ve also seen banked end-customers grow 7x to over 350,000 and annualized transaction volumes grow 7x.

Helping companies expand financial access

Raising capital, while an important milestone, is never the goal. It’s a step towards realizing our mission to help companies launch new banking products, unlock value and expand financial access. We think about our mission in two ripples.

The first ripple is about making it significantly easier for builders to build. Since launching Unit, we’ve spent time with hundreds of CEOs, CTOs, and product leaders, and we continue to be inspired by what they’re building. Their enthusiastic feedback on our product, and the subsequent success they’re seeing, are the fuel for our work. Two weeks ago, a CEO of a fast-growing company that serves unpaid family caregivers thanked us for making it possible to bring his product to life. It's this story and many others that remind us why we're building Unit. 

The first ripple generates a second ripple: expanding financial access, and changing people’s relationship with money for the better. Finances are a big source of stress for many of us: 60%+ of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and small business owners feel more stress than ever. End-customers choose to use products built on Unit, since these products offer them a valuable combination of software and financial services. The ease and value for these diverse end-customers is our north star, and we think about them every day: small businesses, landlords, renters, students, gig-economy workers, online creators, nonprofits, and many more.

We’re proud of our customers for making financial services more friendly, inclusive, and equitable. Recent examples include Veryable, which helps contract laborers get paid faster, and Forage, which helps more businesses accept online EBT (food stamps) payments, and serve millions of families better. We truly believe in the power of innovation to do good. Our work is just starting.

Accelerating our roadmap and growing our ecosystem

This new round will also help us accelerate our product roadmap and make it even easier for companies to launch and succeed with banking products.

To help customers launch, we’ll continue to invest in a richer feature set, including additional SDKs and banking front-ends. We’ve already built a lot to help: our pilot environment, for example, helps developers open a test account and issue a real card within minutes. Our branded application forms are used by over 50% of our customers to immediately launch a secure, compliant, and low-fraud onboarding experience for end-customers.

To help customers succeed, we’ll continue adding valuable integrations and capabilities. Customer success has always been an important theme in our work. Our recent AWS integration, for example, helps dozens of customers answer important business questions after they take a first product to market (example: which end-customer cohorts and marketing campaigns created the highest revenue?). Features like instant funding via card, flexible terms, and rewards help our customer grow and serve end-customers better.

Product work is only part of the big picture at Unit. As a leader in a regulated industry, Unit will also continue to add partner banks and invest in its compliance and legal teams, led by Amanda Swoverland (Chief Compliance Officer) and Alex Acree (Chief Legal Officer). We are committed to maintaining the highest standards for security and reliability, and making ongoing investments in tools and processes that serve our partner banks and compliance teams. We’re determined to continue leading by example and setting the highest possible bar for ourselves and our industry.

Announcing credit products

We’re also excited to introduce a new area of focus at Unit: credit products that companies can offer to their end-customers.

Every year, tens of millions of individuals and businesses seek access to credit, which can come in many forms: term loans, revolving loans, credit cards, and more. Credit can help businesses grow, create jobs, and contribute to a healthier economy around them. It can also help individuals maintain financial health, build better credit scores, and get better access to opportunity.

Software companies are best positioned to offer credit products, due to a deep understanding of the end-customer. For example, a software company that serves landlords usually understands their personal finances, their properties, and their cash flow from these properties. This company may start by offering bank accounts to these landlords, and then launch credit products like credit cards or revolving loans. This example may explain why we think that the future of fintech is constant rebundling: offering more and more valuable financial products to an engaged audience, all in one place.

However, launching credit products has been difficult for a variety of reasons: bank relationships, compliance, tech and capital. We’d like to show you how we’re expanding Unit to make it simple.

How to build banking and credit with Unit

When we originally designed Unit, we decided to put end-customers at the center of our architecture. End-customers can be businesses, sole proprietors, or individuals. The first products that we helped our customers make available to their end-customers were bank accounts, cards, and payments. 

Here’s how you would offer a bank account and card to an individual end-customer:

Bank accounts were the first building blocks that could be created under an end-customer, and there’s a lot that our customers have been able to achieve with them. 

With the launch of credit we will introduce a new set of building blocks that represent different credit products. Companies will be able to make an API call and create a credit card, a revolving loan, or other credit products originated by Unit’s bank partners. These credit products can be offered to the end-customer in addition to, or instead of, a bank account:

The new credit building blocks are smart and flexible. For example, when offering a credit card, you can:

• Set the credit limit and unique terms (fees, repayment window)
• Track the entire lifecycle of the credit, including the exact timing of repayments and how much remains to be paid
• Pass the relevant data to credit bureaus to help the end-customer build credit

Launching and succeeding with credit products will continue to be an area of focus for us. As with bank accounts, our job would be incomplete if we didn’t offer help with bank relationships, compliance and capital relationships. Business credit cards will be available in beta in the next quarter. If you’d like to learn more about offering credit to your end-customers, get in touch.

Long-term mindset

We’d like to thank all the incredible people that work with us every day: our customers (always first!), our team, our bank partners, our ecosystem partners, and our investors. We wouldn’t be where we are without your ongoing trust and commitment.

Unit was born into a booming tech ecosystem. We make this announcement as the tide is changing, but innovation doesn’t stop. The giant financial services industry will continue to transform quickly over the next 10 years. Individuals and businesses will continue to choose financial services that serve them well, and builders will continue to meet this demand. The capital and infrastructure are there, and we’re proud to play a part in enabling this.

We continue to build in public—see our features, roadmap, and changelog. We're excited for what’s ahead and we can’t wait to see what the world continues to build with us.

Yours,

Itai, Doron and the entire team at Unit

PS: we’re hiring across the board. We love the work that goes into building Unit and the people we work with. If you want to join us on our journey, check out our careers page.