Growing up, Kurt Lin never saw his father get frustrated.
A "traditional, stoic figure," Lin said his father immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. Becoming part of the financial system proved even more difficult than assimilating into a new culture.
Lin recalled visiting bank after bank with his father as a child, watching as his father's applications for a mortgage were denied due to his lack of credit history.
"That was the first time in my life I really saw him crack," Lin told Insider. "The system doesn't work for a lot of people — including my dad," he added.
Lin would find a solution to his father's problem years later while working with Anish Basu and Curtis Lee on an automated health savings account. The trio realized the payroll data integrations they were working on could be the basis of a product that would help lenders work with consumers without strong credit histories.
"That's when the lightbulb hit," said Lin, Pinwheel's CEO.
In 2018, Lin, Basu, and Lee founded Pinwheel, an application-programming interface that shares payroll data to help both fintechs and traditional lenders serve consumers with limited or poor credit, who have historically struggled to access financial products.
The startup announced on Tuesday its $50 million Series B led by GGV Capital. The round included continued participation from Coatue, First Round Capital, and Upfront Ventures, in addition to new funding from AMEX Ventures, Indeed, Kraken Ventures, Franklin Templeton, TQ Ventures, and others.
Pinwheel has raised $77 million to date and plans to use the new funding to grow from 60 to 180 employees, with a focus on engineering roles.
Pinwheel pulls and packages data to help lenders expand access to financial services
Pinwheel's API pulls data from payroll providers, standardizes the data, and packages it in a way that lenders can use it to measure customer riskiness.
The upstart currently connects more than 50 financial institutions, fintechs, and digital banks to roughly 1,400 providers of payroll data.
It collects data on about 80% of "paid Americans," meaning those that earn income or receive government assistance. Data providers include payroll players like ADP, as well as from non-traditional income sources like gig-economy apps and government benefit portals, Lin added.
In addition to providing access to payroll data, Pinwheel enables customers to switch their direct-deposit information and pay back loans directly from their paychecks.
By providing access to income and employment data, Pinwheel hopes to help power the next generation of fintech startups and provide more users with access to financial services.
"We realized that there weren't just tens or hundreds, there were thousands of other companies out there that needed the same access into these payroll systems and these income sources," Lin said.
