Californian fintech start-up Cushion is winding down after more than eight years in operation.US fintech start-up Cushion to close downIn a recent LinkedIn post, founder and CEO Paul Kesserwani states: “At the end of last year, we made the tough decision to wind down Cushion.”“Despite bringing multiple new fintech products to market, we didn’t reach the scale needed to sustain the business,” Kesserwani adds.Kesserwani says Cushion created a “consumer-permissioned aggregator for alternative financial data” and built “the only ‘Plaid for BNPL’ on the market, processing 30m+ emails and over $300m in BNPL loans”.The company also provided a consumer app that monitored users’ bank account transactions to uncover and negotiate potential fee refunds.Since its founding in 2016, Kesserwani says Cushion has onboarded over 1 million users, secured more than $15 million in refunds, and analysed $1.46 trillion in bank transactions.According to PitchBook, the fintech reached a post-money valuation of $82.4 million following a $12 million Series A funding round raised in May 2022. The company raised more than $21 million in total funding.Reflecting on the journey, Kesserwani concludes: “I gave Cushion everything I had for 8+ years. While the outcome wasn’t what we hoped for, we built something that moved the industry forward — and I’m proud of that.”
Lun. Feb 3rd, 2025
