Credit Karma raises $30M for personal finance tools

The site gives users a more complete picture of their credit

Personal finance services became all the rage at the peak of the recession. It’s one of those things that gives the illusion of being in control of your finances. Like how you eat a salad with dinner and tell yourself it’s practically the same thing as doing cardio.

One personal finance startup that landed its first round of funding during the recession—Credit Karma—announced Tuesday that it has raised a $30 million Series B round led by Ribbit Capital and Susquehanna Growth Equity, with help from existing investor Felicis Ventures. The new round brings Credit Karma's total raised to $33.5 million.

The world of personal finance is a pretty crowded space, and Credit Karma offers many of the same features that other services offer, such as bill reminders, alerts, and spending breakdowns to show you where your money is going. The site also offers a comparison feature that lets you compare interest rates on credit cards and loans of all types.

Lots of other personal finance services offer similar tools. Mint offers a spending breakdown, bill reminders, low balance alerts, and more, although the experience isn’t always as smooth as I’d like, considering I still get bill reminders for services I canceled years ago. Pageonce sends mobile alerts to your phone so you can stay on top of spending. Personal Capital is a much more complete service that gives users an overview of all of their assets as well as a breakdown of their portfolio diversity. ReadyforZero helps users pay off their debt.

My personal favorite is Learnvest, which offers all the usual personal finance tools in addition to online courses in financial education and daily money management articles and newsletters.

Credit Karma offers users a more complete picture of their credit, which is missing from a lot of other personal finance sites. It's a real pain in the ass to find out that even though your finances are perfect, your credit score is keeping you from qualifying for a loan because of a missed payment three years ago. 

“Credit Karma has revolutionized the relationship consumers have with their credit, as evidenced by the company’s exponential growth over the past several years,” said Micky Malka, founder and General Partner of Ribbit Capital, in a statement.

Since the company raised its Series A round in 2009, it has grown revenue by 4000% and added 10 million members. Credit Karma is also available on iOS and Android.

“We spent the last seven years looking for a disruptive player in personal financial management and credit analytics that set out to bring transparency to the market, and we finally found Credit Karma,” said Scott Feldman of Susquehanna Growth Equity, in a statement. “No other company offers consumers access to their personal financial condition data and assistance in finding the right credit products, at the right time and at the right cost. All of this for free! It’s a game changing business model that we think could redefine how consumers and financial institutions interact in the future.”

Feldman and Malka will both be joining Credit Karma’s board of directors. 

The company plans to use the new funds from this round to expand into new verticals and markets, hire more team members, expand infrastructure and resources, and introduce new products and tools.