Credit Karma bags $85M for free credit monitoring

Google Capital leads the round and David Lawee joins Credit Karma's board

In the slush pile of personal finance tools that made names for themselves during the recession, the weak shall wither and the strong shall prevail. There can only be one Highlander.

One year after raising a $30 million Series B round, personal finance platform Credit Karma announced Wednesday that it has raised an $85 million round led by Google Capital, with help from Tiger Global and existing investors Ribbit Capital and Susquehanna Growth Equity. The new round brings the company’s total raised to $118.5 million altogether.

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.
But the major difference between Credit Karma and other personal finance tools is its focus on credit ratings. 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. And the reason you weren’t on top of your credit score is because it’s damn near impossible to find a truly free credit monitoring service. (FreeCreditReport.com, it turns out, is not actually free, and unsubscribing takes an act of God.)

“At the core of our company vision is the desire to change how people interact with their finances, making it easier and more transparent,” said CEO Ken Lin, in a statement.

Since raising its B round, Credit Karma has grown to 20 million U.S. users, and revenue and employee headcount have both seen “triple digit percentage growth.”

With the new round, Google Capital partner David Lawee will join Credit Karma’s board of directors.

“Consumers want a trusted, secure service to provide personalized financial information that is easy to understand,” said Lawee, in a statement. “Credit Karma delivers on these extremely high expectations at no cost to consumers. They have established a trusted brand that brings an unprecedented level of transparency to the market. We’re excited to see what’s ahead for the company and to become partners in that vision.”

The company plans to use the new capital from this round to invest in product development (new, free services for users) and ramp up hiring efforts.