We Raised $8.5M to Prepare the Financial Services Industry for the Student Loan Tsunami
We’re beyond excited to announce that Payitoff has successfully raised an $8.5M seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Sound Ventures, Struck Capital and Social Leverage. This puts our total raised to date at $11M, with support from incredible investors like Lachy Groom, Ayo Omojola, Jim Esposito, Rohini Pandhi, Russ Fradin, Ryan Nece, Gokul Rajaram, Todd Jackson and many more.
Why Now?
At Payitoff, we’re building infrastructure to automate and optimize every aspect of debt management, starting with student loans.
This funding comes at a critically important time for our technology as the Student Loan Tsunami is coming in just a few short months: on February 1, 2022, the post-COVID resumption of student loan payments will hit over 43 million borrowers in the US all at once.
This will have massive impacts on our economy: saving, investing and spending across the board will be tighter for the average American. Every financial application will be affected in one way or another by the Tsunami.
The Root of It All
I know firsthand how debilitating this debt can be for borrowers because I lived the student loan nightmare myself. For over a decade, my wife and I were weighed down by six-figure student debt and unsure if we’d ever be able to start a family or own a home.
Frustrated with the status quo, I spent nights and weekends codifying student loan regulations and building a prototype to help us navigate our personal student debt crisis.
This technology, which in time would become core to Payitoff’s algorithm, helped us gain what every borrower seeks: clarity to make the best financial decision. We saved thousands of dollars — empowering us to start a family and move forward with our lives. Now we have a beautiful 3 year old, Mila!
Soon after, I realized we weren’t alone: every borrower could leverage this technology to gain the same insight we did.
Taking our Technology to the Masses
Our team has been working overtime to get our API infrastructure and technology into the hands of as many fintechs, financial institutions, and workplace providers as possible before the Student Loan Tsunami hits. Even though student loans are inherently the most complex debt in existence, Payitoff is dead simple to implement into a financial services platform and provides immediately impactful outcomes for both borrowers and the apps they use every day.
In fact, partners using Payitoff save the average borrower $240 a month on their student loan payments. This isn’t money they have to pay back either — much of the savings comes from federal and state assistance programs which are a headache to navigate independently, but can be instantly enrolled in using Payitoff.
By the way — we’re still the only provider whose debt API allows for electronic enrollments into these programs, which means borrowers can be approved for better outcomes in just 10 days, versus the industry standard of 6 weeks.
For the businesses using our technology, this means:
increased spending, investing and ADB
incredible retention and account primacy
improved debt-to-income ratios within a month
Optimized for Impact
Our mission is to build a balanced borrower ecosystem, where incentives are aligned across the entire industry.
Our partners are motivated to adopt Payitoff because they, too, see the need to help borrowers in the face of the student debt crisis. After all, servicers want more borrowers in repayment and financial institutions want to empower borrowers to achieve financial goals like buying a car or home. Payitoff is changing the game fundamentally by creating a win-win-win for everyone involved.
In fact, partners using Payitoff save the average borrower $240 a month on their student loan payments.
To the Next Chapter
With this new seed capital, we’ll onboard dozens more fintechs and institutions in advance of 43 million student loan borrowers re-entering repayment on February 1, 2022. This unprecedented event is an opportunity to both expand our reach and make a positive difference in the lives of millions of borrowers who are struggling just like my wife and I were.
Thanks to our talented team, incredible investors and everyone who has helped Payitoff in our journey so far. We couldn’t have done this without you.
Tackling the oncoming Student Loan Tsunami is just the beginning of how we plan to help financial services empower borrowers in the future, with expansion into more debt verticals and financial products on the horizon.
To the next chapter — I’m looking forward to sharing more with you as Payitoff continues to shake up what’s possible in this space.
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P.S. Interested in saving borrowers billions? Apply to our open roles in engineering, sales, customer success and operations here.
About Payitoff
Payitoff is building infrastructure to automate and optimize every aspect of debt management, starting with student loans. The company partners with fintechs, workplace providers and financial institutions to provide technology solutions that produce better financial outcomes for their customers, the borrowers. Payitoff was founded by Bobby Matson in 2017 and the company is headquartered in New York, with a remote-first team dispersed across the country. To-date, Payitoff has raised a total of $11M in funding, from Lachy Groom, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Social Leverage, Sound Ventures and Struck Capital, as well as angel investors, including: Ayo Omojola, Jim Esposito, Rohini Pandhi, Russ Fradin, Ryan Nece and Todd Jackson.