Petal spins out CashScore
Petal
Spinning out CashScore turns Petal from a balance sheet heavy card lender into a software supplier that can earn recurring revenue every time another fintech pulls cash flow data into an underwriting decision. That matters because B2B infrastructure revenue is usually stickier than consumer card revenue, it plugs into a customer’s core approval workflow, and it lets Petal sell the same underwriting engine to many lenders instead of monetizing only its own cardholders.
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The Lithic playbook shows why this can work. Privacy first built virtual card infrastructure for its own consumer product, then exposed that stack as Lithic when outside demand appeared. That B2B platform went on to power customers like Mercury and Novo, showing how an internal tool can become a standalone recurring revenue business.
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Prism Data is selling into a painful, repeat use case. Lenders and fintechs need a way to read raw bank transactions, sort income from bills and transfers, and turn that into an approval or credit limit decision for applicants with little bureau history. Once that logic sits in the application flow, it becomes hard to rip out.
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The strategic upside is broader than credit cards. The same cash flow score can be packaged as an API for personal loans, tenant screening, insurance pricing, and mortgage qualification. That expands Petal from one consumer card niche into a horizontal underwriting tool that other financial products can build on.
The next step is for fintech underwriting to split the way card issuing did, with all in one providers on one side and best of breed APIs on the other. If Prism Data becomes the default cash flow decision layer for thin file consumers, Petal’s software business can outgrow the original card business and give it a much more durable role in the fintech stack.