Moneybox and Truelayer investors back new open banking challenger credit card

Keebo, a new UK challenger credit card leveraging open banking, has launched in beta.

Founded by Michael Vanaselja (pictured), also its CEO, and Matthew Hallett, its chief technology officer, the new credit card will be focused on tackling financial exclusion. 

The pair recently closed a £5m seed equity round led by Breega (backers of Moneybox) and Connect Ventures (backers of Truelayer).

Keebo says it is the only regulated credit card company authorised for open banking-based underwriting, whereby it assesses customers’ broader financial behaviour – including income frequency, spending habits, savings, and investments when making lending decisions.

The company says it wants to target ‘credit invisibles'. This means those with no financial track record for lenders using traditional scoring methods. In the UK, Keebo says, this amounts to nearly 5.2 million people. 

"With a large number of rejected applications made by people with limited or no UK credit histories, we share the goal to open up credit and bring financial inclusion to those who have experienced unfair difficulty with the current model such as freelancers and content creators through the use of our new underwriting technology,” said Michael Vanaselja, CEO and Co-founder.

The card is issued by PayrNet, a subsidiary of Railsbank, and launched with Mastercard.