Pillar Raises $16.9M to Help Immigrants, Refugees Get Credit

Pillar raised 13 million pounds ($16.9 million) in a pre-seed funding round led by Global Founders Capital and Backed VC.

The startup specializes in providing immigrants with access to credit products when moving to a new country, TechFundingNews reported on Thursday (April 21).

Founded by Revolut alumni Ashutosh Bhatt and CTO Adam Lewis, Pillar’s open banking platform powered with data and analytics capabilities is expected to be launched in the third quarter of this year.

“One of the big problems consumers face when moving to a new country is how to access the financial products that they need. The team at Pillar has come up with a genuinely innovative solution to address the issues those consumers face and we look forward to assisting the team’s growth going forward,” said Andre de Haes, founder of Backed VC.

“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,” said Pillar CEO Ashutosh Bhatt.

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Bhatt added that 14 years later he found that the credit landscape hadn’t changed that much from when he first broached it.

“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,” Bhatt said.

Pillar is tackling the limiting structure that puts many immigrants in the position of not being able to take their credit profiles with them across borders. As a result, many find that they can’t access financial services such as credit cards and loans.

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