Lending Platform Happy Money Valued at $1.1B

Lending platform Happy Money has a new reason to be happy, after a recent funding round raised the company’s valuation to $1.1 billion.

Happy Money, which provides unsecured lending in partnership with credit unions, announced the $50 million Series D-1, led by Anthemis Group and CMFG Ventures, in a news release Tuesday (Feb. 8).

“Our growth trajectory and latest capital raise reflect the strength of our business and team — and demonstrate investors’ continued confidence in Happy Money’s ability to grow rapidly,” Happy Money CEO Jeff Winner said in the announcement. “This funding positions us to accelerate development and expansion of our products, including an end-to-end lending API, and deepen our partnerships.”

“Anthemis invests in the next generation of fintech leaders like Happy Money that share our values of diversity, inclusivity, and customer-centric innovation,” said Sean Park, founder of Anthemis Group. “Happy Money has a proven track record of delivering a lending experience that benefits its partners and consumers alike, and I can’t wait to see all they will accomplish in the years to come.”

The fundraising comes soon after Happy Money saw a strong fourth quarter in record-breaking 2021, an average 42% year over year growth in originations between 2018 and 2021 and Winner’s appointment as CEO and board member.

Before joining Happy Money, Winner held leadership roles at Twitter and Stripe, and was chief technology officer for Marcus, Goldman Sachs’ consumer business, where he led the development of the Apple Card and the first cloud-based Goldman Sachs product.

Founded in 2009 and based in California, Happy Money has helped close to 205,000 members, working with lending partners to fund $3.7 billion in loans as of the end of 2021.

Read more: GoCardless Valued at $2.1B After Series G

With the new valuation, Happy Money becomes a “unicorn,” a term for a private company valued at higher than $1 billion.

Other companies achieving unicorn status this week include account-to-account payments platform GoCardless and Pakistani BNPL firm Qisst.