Pillar aims to break down the barriers to credit for migrants with €15.6 million pre-seed

Pillar, a fintech startup founded by Revolut alumni Ashutosh Bhatt and CTO, Adam Lewis, has raised €15.6 million to provide recently arrived immigrants to the UK with lending products.

Pillar aims to tackle the problem that immigrants have when they arrive in a new country – that their credit history is stopped at the border. Set for launch in Q3 2022, the company will use an open banking-led data and analytics engine to score and provide access to credit cards and loans for immigrants with a thin credit file.

Ashutosh Bhatt, CEO of Pillar, comments: “Ever since I moved to the UK and found I couldn’t access any of the everyday products I had in India this has been a problem I have been passionate about solving. I arrived earning a good salary at Barclays and found I couldn’t even get an iPhone! Fourteen years later, and the world of credit still hasn’t changed, so we have set upon building a globally scalable platform that breaks down data silos and credit borders as well as solves this massive problem faced by financially secure people moving to a new country.”

Bhat says that through Pillar, anyone moving to the UK from another country can have a credit card in their pocket before they board their flight.

The company is tackling a similar problem to that identified by Yonder, a fintech startup founded by three Cleasrscore alumni which has just raised £20 million and signed a deal with Yapily to use open banking data to assess the creditworthiness of expats in the UK.

Nova Credit, a US fintech startup that unlocks credit histories for immigrants, has also launched in the UK. The Nova Passport capability pulls newcomers’ established credit data from their country of origin and converts it into an equivalent score and report suitable for use by lenders and financial services providers in their new host country.

Pillar’s funding was led by VC firms Global Founders Capital and Backed VC. A number of high profile angels have also contributed to the raise, including the founders of WageStream, Peter Briffet and Portman Wills and former VP and investor of AirBnB Oliver Jung.