Apple acquires UK financial health startup Credit Kudos

[LONDON] Apple has bought London-based credit scoring startup Credit Kudos, continuing its push into payments technology, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Credit Kudos lets businesses assess loan applicants by analysing banking data, such as user transactions, and offers a service for potential borrowers to assess their credit worthiness.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time," said an Apple spokesperson. "We generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." A spokesperson for Credit Kudos could not be reached for comment.

Apple has been escalating its push in payments in recent years, launching the Apple Card in the US in 2019 and rolling out Apple device instalment plans on the credit card later that year. It's not available internationally yet.

It also offers the Apple Cash card for digital peer-to-peer payments and is working on a service for Apple Pay that would let people buy things and pay them off later in installments, Bloomberg News reported last year.

In February, Apple confirmed plans to release its much-anticipated Tap to Pay feature on the iPhone later this year, giving merchants an alternative to Block's Square technology. Apple has been working on the new feature since around 2020, when it paid about US$100 million for a Canadian startup called Mobeewave.

According to UK business register Companies House, Credit Kudos was incorporated in 2015. The startup last announced funding in April 2020 in a blog post that's no longer accessible, but according to an archived version raised £5 million (S$9 million) and was led by AlbionVC. It didn't disclose a valuation.

Technology blog The Block reported the Credit Kudos deal earlier on Wednesday (Mar 23). BLOOMBERG