Nova Credit

Nova Credit

Nova Credit was founded in 2016 to build infrastructure that helps lenders evaluate consumers who are invisible to traditional domestic credit files. The firm began with a cross-border credit product, Credit Passport, designed to let newcomers to the U.S. port their international credit histories into American underwriting workflows. That product remains in market alongside later additions that extended the firm’s data-sourcing reach into bank transactions and payroll systems. The company reports its tools are now used by more than 7,000 businesses worldwide, though it does not disclose a precise number of end-consumers served. The firm’s strategy spans four products built on consumer-permissioned data. Credit Passport draws from credit bureaus in over 15 countries — including Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom — to serve newcomers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the UAE, and Singapore. Cash Atlas, its cash-flow underwriting module, pulls bank-transaction data to supplement traditional credit reports for an addressable market the company pegs at roughly 150 million U.S. consumers. Income Navigator automates income and employment verification for lenders and property managers, while Eligibility Compass shortens income and asset verification for affordable-housing applications. Named end-users include HSBC, Scotiabank, SoFi, Yardi, MPOWER, and Appfolio. Nova Credit operates as a Consumer Reporting Agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and has disclosed $45 million in total venture funding, most recently via the Series D round that the firm publicized as a $35 million raise. Its board includes a former Comptroller of the Currency from Canapi Ventures, a General Catalyst managing director, and a Kleiner Perkins general partner; its co-founder board director also co-founded Credit Karma. The company does not publish a headcount figure, though it notes employees are spread across 15 states and 5 countries. In 2025 it was named to the Forbes Fintech 50, and in 2026 it won a Built In Best Places to Work award. Nova Credit’s architecture differs from a conventional credit bureau because it neither owns the underlying data nor relies on traditional bureau trade lines alone. It acts as a permissioning layer that integrates third-party data sources — foreign credit bureaus, open-banking pipes, payroll providers — and applies its own analytics to generate risk signals for lenders. That hybrid structure allows it to operate as a regulated CRA while delivering alternative-data underwriting tools, making it a route for banks that want to expand into thin-file or newcomer segments without building the cross-jurisdictional data agreements themselves.