Nova Credit

Nova Credit is a credit infrastructure and analytics company that aggregates consumer-permissioned financial data from international credit bureaus, bank data aggregators, payroll systems and documents into a single platform used for consumer credit underwriting and income verification. The company operates as a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act, providing clients with the ability to approve, decline and issue adverse action notices while Nova Credit manages consumer disputes.

The platform is organized around four products: Cash Atlas, which supports credit risk assessment using consumer-permissioned bank transaction data and includes more than 1,000 attributes and the NovaScore Cash Flow (NSCF) risk score; Income Navigator for automated income verification; Credit Passport, which translates a consumer's foreign credit history into a standardized report usable by domestic lenders and is described as the company's highest revenue-generating product; and Eligibility Compass for income and asset verification. These sit on the Nova Credit Platform, which handles onboarding and orchestration of multiple data sources. Nova Credit also offers a customer dashboard with enterprise features such as SAML single sign-on and SCIM user provisioning, and publishes public API documentation covering multiple product API versions and webview integrations.

The company positions its multi-source approach as increasing coverage and uptime while reducing latency, and states that clients can implement cash flow underwriting or international credit data 9–12 months faster than building in-house alternatives.

Founding story

Nova Credit was founded in 2016 by Misha Esipov (CEO), Nicky Goulimis (COO) and Loek Janssen (CTO), who met at Stanford University, where Esipov and Goulimis were pursuing MBAs and Janssen a master's degree at the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Engineering. Esipov immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1990 at age three, studied mathematics and finance at New York University, and worked at Goldman Sachs (2009–2012) and Apollo Global Management (2012–2014) before Stanford; Janssen came from the Netherlands with an econometrics background, and all three had experienced credit-access difficulties as non-Americans. The concept originated in the Stanford course The Lean Launchpad and was refined through interviews with hundreds of potential customers; after finding that lenders also viewed limited credit-file coverage as a problem, the team was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2016 batch.

Business model

Nova Credit sells data and analytics infrastructure to businesses that make credit and screening decisions, delivering consumer-permissioned credit, bank transaction, payroll and document data through APIs, webviews and a customer dashboard. Its role as a Consumer Reporting Agency, including dispute management and adverse action support, is part of the offering, as are integration services, strategic advice and ongoing support from a dedicated services team.

Sources describe products sold to business clients — lenders, property managers and financial services firms — with Credit Passport identified as the highest revenue-generating product; specific pricing terms are not stated in the available material.

Traction

Nova Credit reports 26 data sources, more than 7,000 customers worldwide and over $10 billion in credit value unlocked. Since its 2023 Series C the company deepened partnerships with MoneyLion, Imprint and SoFi, expanded into property management via Yardi, AppFolio, MRI Software and Entrata, and announced that Chase, PayPal and Yardi would deploy Cash Atlas. Third-party research listed 133 employees and $123.4 million in total funding as of March 2025, prior to the October 2025 Series D.

Latest developments

In October 2025 Nova Credit announced a $35 million Series D led by Socium Ventures, a venture firm backed by Cox Enterprises, with participation from Canapi Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Y Combinator, NAVentures, Harmonic Growth Partners, Radiate Capital and Gaingels. The company said the capital will accelerate the buildout of the Nova Credit Platform's infrastructure, analytics and FCRA compliance capabilities. It also announced that Chase, PayPal and Yardi will deploy Cash Atlas across lending and tenant screening operations, and added Gene Ludwig and Nichole Mustard to its board.