Banking whenever and wherever has become a consistent expectation for consumers who have become accustomed to the digitization of banking services. With many fintechs offering a range of flexible financial services made easy and cost-effective from a smart phone, large institutions have struggled to transition all their services to a digital format. Fortunately for banks, Amount is a fintech whose mission is to help large institutions go digital in months, rather than years.
Chicago-based Amount formed just prior to the pandemic and has risen very quickly due to the demand of its exceptionally relevant technology and services. Today, the 400-person company offers traditional financing institutions the platform to provide “a secure and seamless digital customer and merchant experience.” Amount offers “battle-tested” retail banking and point of sale technology that gives banks an integrated end-to-end platform, unified data, and seamless customer experience that delivers the needs of modern customers through digital banking. While doing this, the company mitigates digital fraud and risk through its high standard of identity verification and analytics capabilities.
Today, Amount’s clients span institutions who collectively manage almost $2 trillion in U.S. assets across over 50 million U.S, customers. Jumping onboard were eager investors in a Series D funding round. Leading the bevy of investors was growth equity firm WestCap who was joined by Hanaco Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Invus Opportunities, and Barclays Principal Investments. Together, $99 million was raised, valuing the young company at just over $1 billion, making it a unicorn a short time after its founding in 2019. This investment follows a Series C round led by Goldman Sachs only 5 months prior. To date the company has raised $243 million since spinning off from online lender Avant.
Speaking on the investment, CEO Adam Hughes said, “The pandemic dramatically accelerated banks’ interest in further digitizing the retail lending experience and offering additional buy now, pay later financing options with the rise of e-commerce.” He added, “Banks are facing significant disruption risk from fintech competitors, so an Amount partnership can deliver a world-class digital experience with significant go-to-market advantages.”
It was shared that the capital will be used to further speed up R&D through investing in technology and products. Acquisitions will also be in the works for the company, and it has been surveying interesting technologies that can be layered into the existing product. The company has not provided any detail on its financials other than to share that Amount has “performed well” since branching off to be its own company in 2020. That said, Hughes did share that Amount will be expecting “significant” revenue growth in 2021.
