Fintech Firm Marlette Holdings Turns Proptech With Till Acquisition
The financial products company adds rent payment flexibility to its offerings.
Marlette Holdings, a fintech company that operates the Best Egg personal finance products site, has acquired proptech firm Till, which allows consumer tenants to break up rent into multiple smaller payments during the month.
“The Till acquisition is an example of how we can leverage our strong financial position and capital markets expertise to scale innovative products,” a company press release quoted Andrew Deringer, chief capital officer at Best Egg, as saying. “We will continue to look for strategic opportunities that create value for our customers as well as our shareholders.”
It’s an interesting crossover, where a company addressing other areas of consumer credit is moving into proptech through an acquisition. Recently, construction management software vendor Procore announced a cash cycle tool to reduce “payment friction by expediting invoice review and providing payment options powered by Goldman Sachs.”
Till had acquired $8 million in seed funding in the summer of 2020 from Route 66 Ventures, MetaProp and NextGen Venture Partners. The company’s Flexible Rent platform lets renters set up a customized payment schedule that better lines up with their individual cash flow situations. The goal is to help “them to become consistent, on-time payers,” and avoid late fees, according to a press release at the time.
Till currently claims that property owners using the system see a 20% to 50% increase in on-time collections, 97% “renter success,” and 70% reduction in time managing delinquency. The platform is free for owners and operators to adopt. The company tells consumers that they can set their own schedule to better budget and that each payment gets reported to credit bureaus.
David Sullivan, co-founder and CEO of Till, pointed to Best Egg’s “scale, best-in-class technology, and funding capabilities” as capabilities that would help expansion of rent payment services.
The Best Egg site claims to have funded 1.1 million in loans for a total of more than $21 billion, meaning an average of more than $19,000 with 95% customer satisfaction, although asterisks to indicating a source of the latter didn’t seem to appear anywhere on the site. This may be related to reviews on the site Trustpilot, where out of 7,654 reviews the score is 4.6 out of 5, or 92%.
Best Egg lists personal loans as well as a branded credit card as financial products, as well as credit monitoring and management tools.