Altro is a San Francisco, CA-based platform that operates an online credit building platform designed to help users convert their subscription payments into credit history. It allows members to link their recurring payments, such as rent and subscription payments, to leverage unseen and uncounted costs to build their credit score, enabling individuals to upscale their credit scores.
Altro was funded $18 million led by Pendulum, with support from Jay-Z’s Marcy Ventures, Black Capital Fund, Citi Ventures, Concrete Rose Fund, and individual angel investors such as Dick Parsons and Deborah Quazzo, among others. The software company intends to utilize the new funding to build its credit and financial literacy program and bring education and economic power to those excluded from traditional finance systems.
Before the Altro build, the founder Michael Broughton had trouble securing the necessary financing to pay his tuition in college. That experience stuck with him. Then, he met Ayush Jain at the University of Southern California, and the couple connected over their view that credit access should be free. They came up with the concept of helping people make credit via recurring payment setups such as virtual subscriptions to Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu.
In December 2019, they started Altro and hunkering down in a Hacker House with a few others to make out a platform that locates a person’s recurring transactions and links them to a trade line that reports to all three credit bureaus. For the unacquainted, a tradeline is a line of data that goes directly into a bureau’s system that affects a person’s FICO score, used for underwriting.
Broughton said they’re not creating their score, but instead, it is a direct correlation to your actual score enhanced over time, which a user can see in our app. The users would be spending a charge, but a percentage goes to them rather than the companies. They don’t want to charge users for access to something they already have.
Altro concentrates on educating users via a catalog of over 350 educational audio clips covering topics like cryptocurrency, investing, and trading. Watching the snippets, the company says, allows users to become more financially savvy and positively impacts users’ scores the more they engage.
Also, the company plans to allow people soon to build credit by completing rent payments on time. An offering that was open on its platform before and is being carried back in the coming months. Platforms like Altro can promote change that will improve people’s lives and help this country achieve more significant economic possibilities.
By: K. Tagura
Author statement:
Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.
