Apple acquires UK fintech company Credit Kudos for an undisclosed amount, as Apple does not typically disclose the cost of its acquisitions. Credit Kudos last raised five million pounds sterling (six and five million US dollars) in financing in April XNUMX.
Neither Credit Kudos nor Apple could be reached to confirm the deal, which was first reported by crypto-focused publication The Block, citing 3 sources familiar with the deal. The privacy policy link on the Credit Kudos site today redirects to Apple's privacy policy.
Credit Kudos is a challenging credit bureau founded in XNUMX by Freddy Kelly and Matt Schofield after Kelly had trouble getting credit when he returned to the UK after working abroad in the US It uses machine learning and data in real time to create a more complete picture of a person's credit score, rather than traditional agencies, such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, which typically rely on older information to create a profile, such as bank statements and useful statements .
The Open Banking Opportunity
The company has also benefited from the recent wave of open banking regulations around the world, which aim to open up users' financial data through a set of secure application programming interfaces (APIs). Credit Kudos gives this data to customers of the service for services like affordability and hazard assessment.
In the US, where open banking regulations have yet to be formally enacted, banks lack a consistent set of APIs to work with, leaving companies unable to provide access to this invaluable data.
As a result, new public banking companies have attracted a lot of attention from mergers and acquisitions in recent times. In the first month of XNUMX, Visa canceled its acquisition of San Francisco-based financial data specialist Plaid before turning to Swedish open banking firm Tink that year. On the other hand, Mastercard announced that it was expanding its fintech capabilities by acquiring the Danish open banking start-up Aiia in September XNUMX.
It's unclear now what Apple plans to do with Credit Kudos, but it has invested heavily in its fintech capabilities in recent times, particularly its Apple Pay mobile wallet and Apple Card credit card, which is now not only available in the US and was built in partnership with Goldman Sachs.
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