Why we invested in Method Financial, the company redefining and enhancing financial connectivity
The financial landscape is fragmented, with user liability data—information about an individual’s debts and financial obligations, such as credit card balances, auto loans, student loans, mortgages, and utility bills—spread across multiple account types and institutions. These “walled gardens” limit access to essential data, hindering innovation in financial experiences, access to competitive products, and embedded payments. Consequently, consumers experience a sub-optimal user experience, with inherent viewing and payment friction, subpar credit underwriting, and few truly personalized financial products.
Method Financial offers a comprehensive solution by connecting to over 15,000 financial institutions to pull student loans, credit card, auto loan, mortgage, and bills through a single API. This API provides both “read” and “write” capabilities, allowing for integration with just a few lines of code. Method’s platform is consumer-permissioned, meaning that APIs can only be called with explicit consumer consent. Taken together with a seamless, single sign-on experience, with users authenticating themselves using just a phone number and eliminating the need for re-authentication for future API calls, Method is redefining financial account connectivity and is well positioned to enhance a broadening set of verticals with innovative use cases including transaction intelligence, card linking and payments.
Method currently supports over 60 fintechs, lenders, and financial institutions, including notable names like Sofi, Aven, Bilt Rewards, Happy Money, and Figure. The company is backed by investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Emergence Capital, YC, Avra Capital, Ardent Ventures, and Truist Ventures. We’re proud to be a part of Method’s $41.5M Series B funding round, enabling 30 million credentialless account connections for nearly 4 million Americans. This latest funding will allow Method to focus on identity-driven connectivity to enhance end-to-end loan refinancing capabilities and expand into credit card connectivity and network transaction data.
The founding team of Jose Bethancourt, Marco del Carmen, and Mit Shah brings a wealth of experience and expertise. Jose Bethancourt has a proven track record as the founding CEO of GradJoy, a YC-backed startup that evolved into Method. He also co-founded two other companies with CTO Marco del Carmen. Mit Shah complements the team with his deep startup operating experience. We believe this team is well-equipped to drive the success of Method.
The timing is ideal for Method’s solution, as embedded fintech experiences are becoming increasingly relevant, with more companies adopting fintech capabilities to provide personalized solutions and tap into new revenue streams. The momentum of open banking and interoperability in the UK and Europe, now spreading to the United States, further supports Method’s positioning as a leader in this evolving landscape. We’re excited to back Method, and believe its first-mover advantage and broadening use cases make it a strong contender in a more embedded and open financial world.
Carlos Castellanos is an investor at Samsung Next. Samsung Next’s investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited to, Samsung Electronics.