[BNPL for Business] Exclusive: Imprint, a co-branded credit card startup, closes $75 million Series C and boosts valuation to $600 million

Daragh Murphy knows how to milk a cow.

As a kid in Ireland, he spent summers on his grandparents’ dairy farm. Lots of life has since elapsed for Murphy, but it’s still his icebreaker-fun fact.

“It’s awesome and weird to say out loud,” he said, careful when asked about how it actually works. “The hardest thing about milking a cow is dodging excrements that may come from the cow. You’re in a pit, you basically get this machine, and…I’m getting too graphic.”

It’s an unlikely beginning but a telling one, suggesting that Murphy is someone who makes the most out of difficult, strange things. In his late teens and 20s, Murphy went from small town Ireland to Dublin to Chicago, eventually becoming a Duke-educated corporate lawyer in New York. During the pandemic, he met Gaurav Ahuja, then a partner at Thrive Capital, and the two took socially distanced walks in Washington Square Park, talking about fintech. The result of those talks: Imprint, a startup looking to disrupt the co-branded credit card space, which the two founded in 2020.

Four years later, Imprint has come a long way, and is gearing up to go even further. The startup has raised a $75 million Series C, Fortune has exclusively learned. The Series C was led by Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, and was joined by existing investors Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Ribbit Capital. This funding round brings Imprint’s total capital raised to $225 million, and represents a massive valuation bump—at its Series B, Imprint was valued at $240 million. Today, the startup officially boasts a valuation of $600 million.

It’s an impressive ascent, especially given the tough couple of years that fintech as a space has had—and the high barriers to entry in co-branded credit cards. For the uninitiated, co-branded cards are issued in a partnership between a bank and a brand. They can, generally, be used anywhere and offer perks like extra shopping rewards or purchase protection. And because dealing with credit cards is capital-intensive (Imprint took on a $300 million credit facility with Citibank earlier this year) and highly regulated, it’s a tough but colossal market.

“The U.S. has the biggest GDP of any country on Earth, and 70% of the U.S. GDP is from consumer spending,” Murphy said. “Consumerism is America, effectively. If you can give credit to people, you can give them rewards, and you give them a better product—the market is there and it takes care of itself.”

There are advantages to the co-branded space, but winning over big customers is vital to Imprint’s success moving forward. It’s a competitive space, with large players in the form of traditional banks, from Chase to Citi, and other companies like Synchrony and Bread Financial.