Credit Karma, a site that looks to help consumers understand, track, and improve their credit scores, has raised a $2.5 million Series A funding round led by QED Investors, with participation from SV Angel, Aydin Senkut, and Founders Fund, via FF Angel.
Credit Karma, which launched in March 2008, is a site that features free credit checks, educational guides, and tools for analyzing your credit score’s current status (presented as a ‘report card’) and for optimizing your credit over time (you can check in on your score on a daily basis if you want to). The are also reviews of various credit cards, as well as sponsored offers based on your current credit rating.
Credit Karma’s tools are all free — the site makes money through advertising and lead gen offers, in much the same way that Billshrink and Mint do. CEO Kenneth Lin says that the site doesn’t ever sell user information, but instead shows users offers that they can elect to pursue. For example, the site might use your credit report to analyze your auto loan rate, and then suggest packages that would give you a better deal.
Credit Karma is also offering a private label version of its product. Sears has partnered with the site to give Sears Cardholders an enhanced version of Credit Karma that sends users a monthly credit update via Email (normal Credit Karma users have to manually check in on the site themselves for an update).
My question is does checking your credit score on Credit Karma reflect on your rating like it does with FreeCreditReport and all of the other sites? Typically running daily credit checks kills peoples scores.
From their FAQ:
“Will using Credit Karma lower my credit score?
No. Credit Karma is making the credit score request on your behalf. Inquires made on your behalf will not be shown to creditors and will not affect your credit score. “
Yawn. Is this suppose to be groundbreaking or innovative?
Aren’t all the credit bureaus and a bunch of other bottom feeders already running this exact service under names like FreeCretitReport.com, FreeTripleScore.com TrueCredit and so forth?
They all have the same tools and bright colored flash chart APIs… options to correct your scores by conversing with the credit bureau in 100 character messages (less than a tweet!), they promise much and celebrate their poor delivery of a few measly points on your score (just enough to keep your credit down so banks can charge you high interest but also enough to keep you paying for membership and premium services)
Another industry that makes nothing
This is a free scaled down version of what those other sites have. Those other sites charge monthly fees, while CK does not.
Not sure how viable a model they have though, nothing really enticing to keep me coming back. And really wouldn’t consider signing up for their offers while looking at my credit score. Mint had something that kept me there, CK not so much.
You couldnt be more wrong. Have you ever used Mint.com? This is just like Mint except it’s for your credit score. I’ve used the other credit score sites and yeah, they’re bottom-feeding scum suckers. this site is free and actually gives you some very good information that you can act on immediately. Upon joining the site I almost signed up for a refinance of my mortgage that would save me about $200 a month.
$500 + $2.5 million.
You are going to recover from advertising ?
Are you familiar with CPA payout on credit card applications?
According to the list of available offers on one CPA marketplace I use, card issuers are paying out between $35 and $100 depending on the brand of card.
Reminds me of Mint.com.
Woot … congrats to the team, especially Ken Lin and Eric Hikade. Let’s grab a beeeeeah!!!
CK is a pretty cool service. It does one thing really well. I’ve used it for a while and it’s helped me keep my credit score under control.
Mint? Mint is gone. Say Intuit now.
Intuit should buy this and have it integrated with Mint. That would truly make for a complete personal finance tracking system.
congrats to Ken Lin & team… great job & keep it up
Congrats, Ken & Eric. For those of you who haven’t checked it out yet, like everything from Eric Hikade, the site design & UI are outstanding.
Congratulations to the team. Credit Karma is an excellent, free, and safe product.
These guys do NOT give you the FICO score – they gave you your FACO Score — No reason to keep coming up for a Transunion Score that major lenders do NOT use.
Good luck with the $2.5MM!
Check out Quizzle.com. They give a free credit report and score, with no credit card required. I hear they have so big things coming in the coming months. The budget section is about to go BIG!!!!
Clearing up some confusion to Aaron Baer’s comment – viewing your own credit report and score will not cause any decrease in the score, regardless of the site you choose to pull the information.