[ad_1]
Credit Karma, the US start-up with 85 million users who offers credit reports and a platform to browse and buy other financial services, has made an acquisition allowing it to launch its first expansion overseas beyond the United States and Canada: acquired Noddle, TransUnion's UK-based credit registry service with 4 million users.
The financial terms of the deal are not disclosed, but Valerie Wagoner, Credit Karma's vice president of international (who was previously on Twitter), said it would "go ahead." A complete acquisition of technology and employees – 35 in total – and that TransUnion did not agree. This transaction is potentially involved in Credit Karma, although they will continue to work with TransUnion, which provides data to Credit Karma, as it did previously.
Credit Karma has raised $ 500 million during a high school earlier this year, which earned him $ 4 billion, especially to fuel its growth, and that's what it has. made. (He also acquired an approved mortgage platform in August.)
For TransUnion, it's a house cleaning, so to speak. The company, a credit reporting agency competing with Equifax and Experian – and therefore partly with Credit Karma as well – acquired CallCredit in the UK earlier this year for $ 1.4 billion, and Noddle was doing part of CallCredit that already overlapped operations of the largest company: hence the divestment.
"We are proud to partner with Credit Karma since its inception to give tens of millions of consumers the information they need to make informed financial decisions," said John Danaher, president of Consumer Interactive at TransUnion. communicated. "This agreement represents an expansion of our mission in the UK and we look forward to supporting Credit Karma in its global expansion."
In an interview, Wagoner stated that the first thing Credit Karma had to do was to make previously paid Noddle credit scoring services free, in order to align with Credit Karma's business model of offering free scoring and credit monitoring services. and make money when a user buys (not just clicks) other financial services on his site from partners.
"We will ensure that 100% of the activities are free and accessible to all," she said.
This will be the first step in the integration of the two companies and their customers, she said: the next step will be to open the wide range of Credit Karma offers, which cover services such as auto loans and loans. mortgages, credit cards and refinancing offers. Noddle users.
Although most of the integration will involve the use of the existing Noddle base and the established presence in the UK market for the importation of Credit Karma products, the fact that Noddle comes to Credit Karma will also be characteristic.
The US start-up launched a credit monitoring tool six months ago – partly to address the many data breaches we've seen recently in the world's Equifax – and it will expand to do more with the monitoring of the identity.
According to Wagoner, this is an area in which Noddle has developed products. The long-term plan will be to use part of this development in Credit Karma's broader activities.
"We never want data breaches, but we know that they are inevitable nowadays," she said, "not only in credit reporting agencies, but in all of them." companies. It is therefore important that we be able to provide members with the services that affect them. and their credit around monitoring identities and services that help monitor panties. "
She noted that Noddle's identity monitoring product – which was one of its pay products – is relatively unused today. For example, it entered into a partnership with TalkTalk in 2015 to provide user credentials monitoring after the carrier has reported a data breach that would have allowed TalkTalk to pay the monitoring contract to provide the service for free to its customers. But "it's a sign that Noddle cares about this mission and that it's perfectly suited to the family's Credit Karma family." She does not know when this product will be routed to Credit Karma service elsewhere, but it's on the roadmap, she said. .
Source link
