Investing in Spinwheel to power the future of the consumer credit ecosystem

Americans hold a lot of debt, and upward consumer borrowing trends are unlikely to slow down anytime soon.

This debt takes many shapes – credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, student loans – and most consumers juggle obligations across multiple debt categories. Staying on top of it all is hard, especially when dealing with different creditors, interest rates and due dates.

The fragmented nature of debt makes it challenging for consumers to get a holistic view of their financial obligations. No wonder many people struggle to stay current on payments, let alone optimize on reducing their debt.

A tool that would simplify how consumers manage their debt and enable smarter financial decisions, through refinancing or consolidation for example, would be game changing.

Citi Ventures has been monitoring the rise of consumer debt aggregators (CDAs) for some time. We are happy to announce our investment in a clear leader in this category, Spinwheel, a company building the API infrastructure to transform the consumer credit ecosystem.

Making credit data and payments instant, integrated and intelligent

Households in the United States collectively owe more than $18 trillion, up nearly 30% from 2020, with mortgages accounting for more than 70% of the total figure. Other common liabilities include credit cards, auto loans and student loans.

As consumers accumulate debt, it gets harder to manage and keep up. Nearly 12% of people in the United States with credit card debt are delinquent, up from about 6% in 2014. The problem is even more pronounced among low-income people across the country.

Spinwheel is addressing this trend with its category-defining API’s, empowering both consumers and lenders. For consumers, all they have to do is enter their date of birth and phone number into a Spinwheel-powered interface to aggregate and pay down all their outstanding liabilities in one place. For lenders, they can embed Spinwheel into their digital platforms to get granular data on their customers’ liabilities and, importantly, offer them tailored solutions.

Helping consumers – and the companies that serve them – take control of debt

Spinwheel partners with financial institutions, fintechs and other platforms to transform how consumers access, understand and act on their debt:

• Streamlining the user experience: The company’s one-step onboarding makes it easy for consumers to transfer balances, make direct payments and pre-qualify for offers that could lower the interest rates on what they owe.
• Embedding payments: Spinwheel’s platform allows consumers to make payments on everything from student loans to monthly bills within one application, rather than having to navigate across different sites.
• Integrating seamlessly with financial institutions: Spinwheel’s APIs, robust developer portal and implementation guides facilitate rapid and scalable integration into customer-facing applications.

Spinwheel's real-time consumer credit data and payments platform currently supports more than 15 million users and 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, facilitating over $1.5 trillion in consumer debt across its network.

Benefits of empowering consumers around debt

Spinwheel’s tools offer a win-win for consumers and the financial companies that serve them. Providing critical infrastructure with clear benefits for both sides of the market, Spinwheel enables use cases such as:

• Personalized financial management: Spinwheel makes it easy for consumers to see, understand and act on their liabilities. With accurate data and intelligent actions, Spinwheel enables consumers to manage their financial wellness.
• Seamlessly consolidate loans: With just a phone number and date of birth, consumers can manage their cash flow by consolidating their liabilities under a new loan from a financial institution or lender, ultimately lowering the costs of their loans. Lenders can easily offer better terms and rates with improved economics and better data.
• One-click balance transfers: With Spinwheel, issuers can help consumers manage their high-interest credit card balances while improving usage of their own cards. Many consumers who can benefit from refinancing are either unaware they can make a switch or unfamiliar with how to find offers and take advantage of lower interest rates.

Experienced founders and the road ahead

Spinwheel is well-positioned to drive the conversation around consumer debt aggregation. Its CEO and Co-Founder, Tomás Campos, has worked with CTO and Co-Founder, Tushar Vaish, across multiple previous endeavors, bringing a strong combined experience on both the tech and product strategy fronts. Tomás was previously General Manager at Blackhawk Network, a fintech in the digital payments and prepaid gift cards space. While there, he gained experience selling to large enterprises alongside Tushar, who has decades of proven engineering leadership and security expertise.

We believe Spinwheel’s API infrastructure has the potential to reshape the consumer credit ecosystem. By helping both institutions and individuals work smarter with debt, Spinwheel is addressing a foundational problem in consumer finance. We’re proud to support the team on this journey!