Nova Credit

Overview

Nova Credit is a credit infrastructure and analytics company that helps lenders extend credit to people traditional credit bureaus cannot see: its Credit Passport product translates a newcomer’s foreign credit history into a US-equivalent score and report, and its Cash Atlas product underwrites borrowers from consumer-permissioned bank cash-flow data instead (Coverager; Finovate). Founded in 2016 after beginning as a Stanford graduate research project, the company raised a $45 million Series C in 2023 and a $35 million Series D in 2025, by which point Chase and PayPal had adopted its cash-flow underwriting (Finovate; FinTech Futures).

The company is based in San Francisco — though one 2023 trade report placed its headquarters in New York, a discrepancy flagged below rather than silently resolved. Its co-founders are Misha Esipov (CEO), Nicky Goulimis, and Loek Janssen, all immigrants who met at Stanford (FinTech Global).

A Stanford project about credit that does not travel

Nova Credit’s founding problem was simple and personal: credit history was trapped inside national borders. The three co-founders, studying at Stanford, found they shared the same experience — despite creditworthiness, net worth, or employment history at home, their credit histories were inaccessible to US businesses, leaving them excluded from rental units or offered sub-optimal rates on auto loans and other products (FinTech Global). Their answer, first built as a graduate research project in 2015 and then as a company founded in 2016, was a platform that integrates with credit databases internationally and lets lenders access the data through a single API, ingested and returned with a recommendation in real time (FinTech Global).

The flagship product, Credit Passport, translates foreign credit data into a US-equivalent score and report in a format familiar to American underwriters, delivered in real time so newcomers can be approved for cards and loans instantly rather than starting from scratch (Coverager). A $16 million Series A closed in 2018 with General Catalyst among the investors, and a TransUnion partnership carried the technology to newcomers to Canada, mapping foreign scores to Canadian equivalents (FinTech Global). The $50 million Series B of February 2020, led by Kleiner Perkins with Canapi Ventures, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, and Nyca Partners, extended coverage to newcomers from 11 countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom (Coverager).

Beyond borders: cash-flow underwriting and the Alloy link

Cross-border credit remained the core, but the company broadened from it. By the October 2023 Series C — $45 million led by Canapi Ventures, with Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Avid Ventures, Geodesic Capital, Harmonic Capital, Radiate Capital, and Socium Ventures — the stated purpose was to scale Cash Atlas, its cash-flow underwriting and income-and-employment verification tool, alongside Credit Passport (Finovate). Cash Atlas uses open-finance analysis of consumer-permissioned transaction data, letting lenders underwrite the more than 60 million new-to-credit, new-to-country, and other thin-file consumers, and by then revenue had grown tenfold since the Series B, with HSBC, Verizon, Scotiabank, Earnest, and Yardi added as partners and product reach extended to 20 countries outside the US, including Canada, the UK, the UAE, and Singapore (Finovate). HSBC UK used Credit Passport to lend to international arrivals, and Earnest used the technology to widen access to private student loans (FinTech Futures).

Nova Credit also appears inside other fintechs’ inclusion strategies: Alloy partnered with Nova Credit to offer lenders a way to be more inclusive and serve customers across the credit spectrum while avoiding fraud, with Alloy co-founder Laura Spiekerman framing the goal as access to credit for millions who do not fit traditional creditworthiness profiles (PYMNTS). The October 2025 Series D, $35 million led by Socium Ventures, funded further build-out of the Nova Credit Platform — and came as Cash Atlas, introduced in 2023, was selected by Chase, PayPal, and Yardi for lending and tenant screening, with Chase also adopting its passport product for converting international credit data into standardized US reports in real time (FinTech Futures).

What this profile does not claim

• Headquarters city is disputed across the fully-read sources: FinTech Global (2018) and FinTech Futures (2025) say San Francisco, while FinTech Futures’ 2023 Series C report says New York. This profile uses San Francisco and flags the conflict rather than resolving it by guesswork.
• Total funding is not stated: the per-round figures in fully-read sources do not reconcile with totals quoted in investor material, and no fully-read independent source bridges the gap.
• The current status of individual partnerships beyond the 2025 Chase, PayPal, and Yardi adoption is not stated; earlier-named partners are described as of their reporting dates only.
• No Nova Credit first-party material was used, so product mechanics beyond those in the independent sources above are deliberately left out.