(Bloomberg) -- The co-brand credit-card startup Imprint Payments Inc. has closed a $300 million credit facility with Citibank as it seeks to accommodate new clients including Turkish Airlines, Brooks Brothers and Eddie Bauer.
Credit facilities help upstarts like New York-based Imprint to grow by providing a way to finance loans without using money from their own balance sheets. These agreements often come with covenants requiring certain liquidity and lending conditions be met by the borrower.
“Big partners want to work with us only if we are well capitalized. The same is true of debt, there are minimum hurdles,” Daragh Murphy, co-founder and chief executive officer of Imprint, said in an interview. “We would never be able to work with Citi if we weren’t always keeping a massive buffer and our job is to never be anywhere close to those covenants.”
The startup sells its co-brand card platform primarily to large, US-based brands that want to offer personalized rewards programs for their customers. The co-brand industry is dominated by banks like American Express, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and Synchrony Bank. Imprint aims to win deals with software built on top of its own underwriting and ledgering systems that it says offers more customization than competitors. The startup can, for example, offer extra discounts for specific items at check-out or send push notifications with promotional deals to cardholders.
Additionally, Murphy is going after brands catering to consumers he says are overlooked by incumbent players. The average Imprint cardholder is 54-years-old with a household income of $75,000, Murphy said.
“We want to see a very nice slice of the average American come into our pipeline,” Murphy said. “We want to serve Americans who AmEx doesn’t serve and we want to give them a product that feels like AmEx to them and works as well.”
Murphy plans to expand into co-branded deposit accounts in the first half of 2025. Imprint is taking cues from Walmart Inc., which has offered financial services including check cashing and money orders for years. Large retailers benefit from having physical stores based in towns across the country which can serve as de facto bank branches.
“There are a lot of people who are underloved by big financial institutions, but they walk into the stores of our partners every day,” Murphy said.
Imprint earns money by taking a slice of net interest income on card balances and processing fees paid to its issuing partner, First Electronic Bank. The average balance on an Imprint card is $1,200, though some customers pay off their cards every month and don’t accrue interest. In 2024, the startup has earned $80 million in GAAP revenue, a number including fees paid out to its bank partner and the card networks. Imprint has raised $150 million in funding from investors including Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital.
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