Petal Scores $34M

The new funding comes from Jefferies, the global investment Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank. Jefferies' variable funding note facility and Silicon Valley Bank's operating company facility will support the public roll-out of the Petal Visa credit card, which launched today. Petal was established to help people build credit not debt, by providing a credit card with no fees, no financial traps and no prior experience with credit required.

"Tens of millions of Americans have no credit score at all, and millions more have short credit histories that may not tell their entire financial stories," said Petal CEO and co-founder Jason Gross. "That's a problem, since building credit is a necessity for many of life's most important milestones, like buying your first car, starting a small business, or purchasing a home. We had more than 100,000 people join a waitlist this year to be among the first invited to apply for the Petal card, and this latest investment will go toward meeting that strong demand."

"We are pleased to support Petal in its mission to help more people qualify for the credit they deserve," said Michael Wade, Head of US ABS Capital Markets, Jefferies.

Petal is made up of designers, engineers, product people, advocates, and industry vets who know what to do. We're using better technology to create the most advanced, intuitive, and user-friendly credit cards on the planet, designed, from the ground up, to help you to financially succeed.

More about today's credit card launch can be found on the Petal blog at http://www.petalcard.com/blog.

ABOUT PETAL:
Petal, a new kind of credit card company built to help people financially succeed (http://www.petalcard.com). Petal was founded by technologists in New York and Silicon Valley, along with seasoned industry executives from financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, American Express, CitiBank, and PayPal. Petal is based in New York City.