The Israeli banking-as-a-service platform Unit, which allows companies to embed financial services in their products, has raised a $100 million in a Series C round led by global software investor Insight Partners. The round included participation from existing investors Accel, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Aleph, Flourish Ventures and TLV Partners. New investors Moving Capital and Stepstone also joined the round.
The latest infusion of capital brings total funding raised by Unit to $169.6m. with a valuation of $1.2 billion, establishing the company as the first banking-as-service platform to reach unicorn status.
Unit will use the new funds to accelerate product development and expand its offering into lending in partnership with its bank partners. Unit will be launching business credit cards in the next three months. Additional lending products including cash advance, invoice factoring and early wage access will follow. The addition of lending products to Unit’s platform will enable companies to build both their banking and lending products on a single platform via a single application programming interface.
“Unit’s mission is to help companies launch new banking products that unlock value and expand financial access for all. We’ve seen tremendous success helping high-growth companies launch game-changing revenue streams and banking experiences in weeks,” said CEO and co-founder Itai Damti. “Lending is the clear next step of growth, and we believe it will be the most important wave in financial services in the coming years. With this new round of funding, Unit will be able to empower the companies best suited to offer lending with the technology and infrastructure to make that a reality.”
Unit has grown significantly over the last year, taking on more than 140 customers including AngelList, HoneyBook, Veryable, Roofstock, Hearth and Benepass. Over the last six months alone, Unit has seen transaction volume grow seven-fold, crossing an annualized transaction volume of $2.6b. It has issued more than 430,000 cards to some 330,000 end-customers, and saw a 10-fold increase in deposit volumes.
Jeff Horing, co-founder and managing director at Insight Partners, said, “Unit has established itself as the leader in the banking-as-a-service space, backed by the overwhelming positive client feedback and traction they have shown over the last year. The company has been able to onboard high-growth tech companies of all sizes, from start-ups to publicly listed enterprises, with their superior technology, speed and reliability. We are bullish on the future of embedded finance and see Unit as the platform of choice for companies big and small.”