In two rounds a seed investment and a Series A, wisetack 19m serieswilhelmtechcrunch has closed $19 million.
The San Francisco-based startup helps in-person businesses offer financing to their customers. It does this by embedding financing options into software platforms that many of these companies already use for their day-to-day operations.
Wisetack’s technology is designed around this growing shift to software platforms, allowing thousands of businesses to easily integrate financing into their existing systems.
Founded in 2018 by Bobby Tzekin, Kolya Klymenko and Liz O’Donnell, Wisetack is already helping to enable buy now, pay later transactions on home repairs and auto services. These integrations are made possible via the company’s suite of APIs, which allow a business to connect its lending platform with its own point-of-sale system and provide consumer financing in real time.
TechCrunch spoke to Tzekin, who told us that the service has partnered with vertical SaaS players in multiple industries — such as plumbing — to provide its BNPL capabilities to their respective customer bases. The result is that tens of thousands of home service professionals can now offer consumers the ability to finance large purchases through their website.
This type of BNPL is also getting attention from online merchants. Square recently announced its acquisition of Afterpay, a company that provides BNPL to retail merchants. But Wisetack is one of the first to focus on the in-person business world, and that reflects a trend in the BNPL space.
The BNPL industry is increasingly looking at the domestic sphere for new growth opportunities, as the technology has proven to be a winning tool for consumers who may not be able to afford big purchases in one go. Among the players that are currently chasing that opportunity is Affirm, which offers a BNPL service to online merchants.
Other examples of this type of BNPL include Klarna, which provides BNPL to online retailers. But Wisetack is one of the few BNPL players that is focused on offering it to in-person service-based businesses such as plumbers and HVAC contractors.
