Doubling employee headcount, expanding scale and strategic partnerships, rising star fintech concludes 2022 with impressive momentum, poised for continued success in the year ahead
DALLAS – January 4, 2023 – Highline Technologies, the payments fintech that unlocks payroll-linked lending and billpay, experienced tremendous growth in 2022, wrapping up a successful year fueled by over $17 million in new funding, continued expansion of the company as well as strategic partnerships critical to the company’s mission of expanding credit and billpay access for consumers and lowering the risk for lenders and billers.
Highline kicked off 2022 by announcing a $4.5 million funding round led by Foundation Capital and Costanoa Ventures, as the company began building a new loan decisioning and payment method based on income, not traditional credit scores. This funding fueled the development of Highline’s API and website, including a complete rebranding, with the first customer going live on the platform in June.
To help meet increased market demand, Highline rapidly expanded during the summer, with significant growth that doubled the number of employees, including strategic operations and leadership hires. This expansion also saw Highline move to a larger new headquarters in Plano, TX, celebrating with a company-wide meeting in its new home with staff from over four continents and nine countries.
In August, Highline continued its momentum with the announcement of its Series A funding, raising $13.5 million from investors Jump Capital, Costanoa Ventures and Foundation Capital. This funding supported Highline’s further growth, including additions to staff, and expanded market adoption of its products and services. It also helped expand strategic alliance opportunities, with Highline announcing its partnership with employment data platform, Argyle, to meet the needs of U.S. consumers who are normally shut out of affordable credit products. Using Highline, lenders decreased their missed payments by up to 2/3rds and reduced default rates by more than half. These efforts and successes led to Highline being recognized as a fintech investors should watch by Business Insider.
Understanding the importance of supporting the fintech and payments ecosystems at both the local and national levels, Highline was pleased to join the American Transaction Processors Coalition (ATPC) to raise the profile of the payments processing space, which promotes innovation and spurs growth; Highline CEO Geoff Brown met with members of Congress as part of the ATPC’s annual Capitol Hill fly-in. Additionally, the company also began working closely with FinTech Atlanta, an organization that helps fund and fuel efforts to recruit, retain and expand fintech businesses and jobs in metro Atlanta and throughout the state of Georgia.
With a year of impressive growth and expansion, Highline’s customer base expanded to include personal loan, early-wage access, lease-to-own, retail, credit card and auto loan verticals. Furthermore, this success has allowed the company to secure key relationships that will produce the next iteration of its platform: a leading-edge release that will vastly improve the consumer experience and provide new origination channels for lenders.
“It has been an amazing year of growth for Highline, as we continued building a world-class team, and connected with a growing number of strategic partners throughout the industry who share our mission of providing both consumers and lenders with better ways to access and extend credit,” said Geoff Brown, CEO of Highline. “We are grateful for everyone who helped make 2022 such a success, and we are committed to improving our product, getting many more lenders into market and continuing our strong, steady growth. Stay tuned for big news in 2023!”
About Highline
Highline is a new payments platform that automates bill payments directly from payroll. It provides lenders with a simple, direct approach to credit decisioning and payment automation that can be supported at scale. Lenders can decrease missed payments by up to 2/3rds, reduce default rates by more than half, expand customers’ credit options and better support financial wellness. Built by subject matter experts, data scientists and technologists, Highline’s solution unleashes the power of payment automation to help lenders and financial institutions expand the pool of potential borrowers. For more information, please visit https://highline.co.
