Imprint
Modern co-branded credit cards for brands
Website: https://imprint.co/
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Imprint |
| Tagline | Modern co-branded credit cards for brands |
| Headquarters | New York, United States |
| Founded | 2020 |
| Stage | Series D |
| Business Model | B2B2C |
| Industry | Fintech (co-branded credit, loyalty) |
| Technology Type | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Funding Label | Series D |
| Total Disclosed | ~$338M across confirmed rounds [CB Insights, Dec 2025] |
Links
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- Website: https://imprint.co/
- Tech Blog: https://tech.imprint.co/
- Developer Docs: https://docs.imprint.co/welcome
- Careers: https://imprint.co/careers
- Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.imprint.consumer
- Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Imprint-com-EI_IE1086822.11,22.htm
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
Imprint is a New York-based fintech that builds and operates co-branded credit card programs for consumer brands. It has just crossed a threshold that puts it firmly on the institutional radar: a $150M Series D announced in December 2025 [CB Insights, Dec 2025]. The company was founded in 2020 and spent its early years constructing a card-issuing stack on top of Stripe's issuing rails, an approach its engineering team has documented publicly [Imprint Tech Blog]. Its commercial proof points include live programs with Booking.com and Rakuten, two brands with meaningful international consumer reach [Imprint.co]. The product wedge is straightforward: brands want loyalty-driven credit cards without standing up a bank partnership and compliance function themselves. Imprint packages issuing, underwriting, rewards, and a mobile app under one platform it calls Imprint Core [Imprint.co]. Funding history is unusually clean for a five-year-old fintech: a $38M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins in November 2021 [TechCrunch, Nov 2021], a $75M Series B led by Ribbit Capital in November 2023 [Fintech Futures, Nov 2023], a $75M Series C led by Khosla Ventures in October 2024 at a reported $600M valuation [Fortune, Oct 2024], and the December 2025 Series D that PYMNTS reports pushed valuation past $1B [PYMNTS, 2025]. Over the next 12 to 18 months the questions that matter are partner concentration (how much of revenue comes from the top two brands), unit economics on interchange and interest income relative to rewards spend, and whether the recent CTO hire signals a deeper push into adjacent financial products beyond credit [ZoomInfo, June 2025].
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by CB Insights, Fortune, TechCrunch, and the company's own engineering blog.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Series D |
| Business Model | B2B2C (brand partner distribution to consumers) |
| Industry / Vertical | Fintech, co-branded credit and loyalty |
| Technology Type | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Funding | ~$338M disclosed across Series A-D |
Company Overview
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Imprint was founded in 2020 and is headquartered at 221 Canal Street in New York [CB Insights, Dec 2025]. The company emerged from the post-2020 wave of fintech infrastructure builders that recognized a structural gap in the legacy co-branded card market. Brands historically had to negotiate directly with large issuing banks, accept rigid program economics, and live with a card experience designed around the bank's tooling rather than the brand's customer journey. Imprint's pitch from inception was that a modern technology stack could compress program build times, give brands real control over rewards design, and ship a consumer app that looked and felt native to the brand.
The milestone arc is tight. The company raised a $38M Series A in November 2021 led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Stripe and Affirm [TechCrunch, Nov 2021]. Two years later, in November 2023, Ribbit Capital led a $75M Series B [Fintech Futures, Nov 2023]. In October 2024, Khosla Ventures led a $75M Series C at a reported $600M valuation, with Fortune noting the company was deepening its brand partner roster [Fortune, Oct 2024]. In June 2025, Imprint announced the appointment of Will Larson as Chief Technology Officer, signaling investment in engineering leadership ahead of scale [ZoomInfo, June 2025]. The Series D closed in December 2025 at $150M, with PYMNTS reporting a valuation above $1B and language from the company suggesting expansion beyond credit into broader financial products [PYMNTS, 2025] [CB Insights, Dec 2025].
Visa-branded cards in Imprint's programs are issued by First Electronic Bank under license from Visa USA, and Mastercard-branded cards are issued by First Electronic Bank under license from Mastercard International [Imprint Help Center]. That sponsor-bank relationship is the regulatory backbone that allows Imprint to operate as a program manager rather than a chartered lender.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by CB Insights, Fortune, TechCrunch, Fintech Futures, and Imprint help documentation.
Product and Technology
MIXED
Imprint's product surface area sits in three layers. The first is the brand-facing program: customizable card design, rewards mechanics, underwriting policy, and pricing tailored to each partner [Imprint.co]. The second is Imprint Core, the company's internal platform that the marketing site describes as powering "every sign-up, every swipe, every rewards redemption, and everything in between" [Imprint.co]. The third is the consumer-facing Imprint mobile app on iOS and Android, which lets cardholders manage account details and view rewards across whichever brand programs they hold [Google Play].
On the engineering side, the company has been unusually transparent for a fintech of its stage. A post on its tech blog describes building the initial card-issuing platform in roughly six months by selecting Stripe's issuing product to handle user and card creation, authorization, and transaction management [Imprint Tech Blog]. A separate post details the architecture of the consumer banking mobile app and its release-cycle tooling [Imprint Tech Blog]. The public developer documentation at docs.imprint.co exposes endpoints for customer sessions, rewards balances, and payment methods, suggesting the platform is increasingly accessed via API by partner brands rather than only through bespoke integrations [Imprint Docs]. An open role for a Senior Software Engineer, AI [AshbyHQ] hints at machine learning work in areas like underwriting or fraud, though the company has not publicly described an AI roadmap.
The two named live programs are the Booking.com travel card and the Rakuten card [Imprint.co]. Public credit terms documents on Imprint's media CDN reference an annual fee of $99 on at least one program tier [Imprint media assets], confirming the company is operating premium-rewards programs rather than only no-fee cards.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Imprint's own product, engineering, and developer documentation, plus the Google Play listing.
Market Research and Opportunity
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The co-branded credit card market matters now because the economics of consumer loyalty have shifted toward payment as the primary loyalty surface, and the legacy issuer stack was not designed to give brands programmatic control over that surface.
Co-branded credit cards are a long-established segment of US consumer credit, historically dominated by partnerships between large issuing banks (Synchrony, Barclays US, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Citi) and major retail, airline, and hospitality brands. Imprint is positioned as a program manager and technology layer that lets brands launch and operate cards without negotiating directly with one of those incumbents on the incumbent's terms. ZoomInfo characterizes Imprint as "a new player making waves in an industry dominated by big banks" [ZoomInfo, June 2025], a framing the company itself echoes in press coverage [Fortune, Oct 2024].
The demand drivers the cited research surfaces are threefold. First, consumer brands are looking for higher-margin, durable revenue streams as direct-to-consumer ad costs rise, and a co-branded card generates interchange and interest share for the brand partner. Second, the rise of embedded finance has lowered the technical bar for non-bank companies to offer financial products, and platforms like Stripe Issuing (which Imprint itself uses) [Imprint Tech Blog] have made the issuing layer composable. Third, brands like Booking.com and Rakuten operate globally and want card programs that integrate tightly with their commerce flows, something legacy issuers have been slow to deliver.
Adjacent and substitute markets include direct bank-issued co-brand programs (the incumbent default), buy-now-pay-later providers (which compete for the same checkout moment but on different credit mechanics), and brand-issued closed-loop store cards. Regulatory exposure is real: co-branded credit issuance sits under the same CFPB, OCC, and state-level lending oversight as any other consumer credit product, and the sponsor-bank model Imprint operates depends on First Electronic Bank's continued willingness and regulatory headroom to support program growth [Imprint Help Center].
| Sizing or Market Datapoint | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Imprint reported valuation, Series C | ~$600M | [Fortune, Oct 2024] |
| Imprint reported valuation, post Series D | >$1B | [PYMNTS, 2025] |
| Series D round size | $150M | [CB Insights, Dec 2025] |
The market sizing data publicly attached to Imprint specifically is limited to its own valuation progression rather than third-party TAM figures, so the table above reports what is verifiable rather than estimating a category number. The takeaway is directional: investors marked the company up roughly 67%+ between the October 2024 Series C and the December 2025 Series D, which is a stronger signal than most late-2025 fintech rounds delivered.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Valuation and round figures confirmed by Fortune, PYMNTS, and CB Insights; broader category sizing not independently sourced in this report.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
Imprint sits between two competitive cohorts: legacy bank issuers that own most existing co-brand programs, and a small number of modern card-platform challengers built in the last decade.
The legacy incumbent set is well known in the public record: Synchrony, Barclays US, Capital One, and JPMorgan Chase together hold the bulk of large US co-brand programs across retail, airline, and hospitality verticals. These players bring chartered-bank balance sheets, decades of underwriting data, and existing relationships with the largest brands. Their structural disadvantage is the product experience layer: the cardholder app, the brand customization, and the speed of program iteration are typically constrained by older core systems.
On the challenger side, the most directly comparable platform-based co-brand operator in public discussion has been Cardless, which has operated co-brand programs for sports and consumer brands. Bond Financial Technologies operated in adjacent embedded card infrastructure before its acquisition by FIS. Marqeta and Lithic provide card-issuing infrastructure rather than full program management, and could be described as suppliers to the same stack Imprint sits in (Stripe Issuing, which Imprint uses, occupies a similar layer) [Imprint Tech Blog].
Where Imprint's edge looks defensible today: it has shipped two named programs with global consumer brands (Booking.com, Rakuten) [Imprint.co], it has built and documented its own technology stack rather than reselling someone else's [Imprint Tech Blog], and it has assembled a capital base of roughly $338M across four rounds led by tier-one investors (Kleiner Perkins, Ribbit, Khosla) [TechCrunch, Nov 2021] [Fintech Futures, Nov 2023] [Fortune, Oct 2024]. Capital and brand-logo proof are perishable advantages on their own, but combined with a sponsor-bank relationship and a working underwriting policy engine they raise the bar for any new entrant. Where Imprint is most exposed: any one of the legacy issuers can match price on a renewal bid for a marquee brand, and the largest brands may eventually choose to in-source the program rather than rent the platform. The 18-month scenario worth watching is whether Imprint signs a third and fourth flagship brand at Booking.com / Rakuten scale; the winner-if-X is Imprint becoming the default modern co-brand stack as legacy renewals come up, and the loser-if-Y is a competing platform (or a re-tooled incumbent) winning the next two RFPs.
Data Accuracy: ORANGE -- Subject company facts are GREEN, but no specific competitors are named in cited sources; competitive map is contextual.
Opportunity
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If Imprint executes against the platform thesis, the prize is becoming the default modern operating system for brand-issued consumer credit in North America, and eventually the embedded financial-products layer for any consumer brand with meaningful repeat purchase behavior.
The headline opportunity. The single largest outcome Imprint could plausibly become is the category-defining co-brand platform that wins the next decade of program renewals as legacy issuer contracts roll off. The cited evidence makes this reachable rather than aspirational: the company already operates programs at Booking.com and Rakuten scale [Imprint.co], it has documented its own card-issuing stack and consumer app architecture rather than depending on a black-box vendor [Imprint Tech Blog], it has tier-one capital from Kleiner Perkins, Ribbit, and Khosla [TechCrunch, Nov 2021] [Fintech Futures, Nov 2023] [Fortune, Oct 2024], and PYMNTS reports the company is actively positioning to expand beyond credit following its $1B+ valuation [PYMNTS, 2025]. The Will Larson CTO appointment in June 2025 [ZoomInfo, June 2025] reads as a deliberate signal that engineering throughput is being scaled to support a broader product surface.
Growth scenarios.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default modern co-brand stack | Imprint wins a third and fourth flagship brand at Booking / Rakuten scale and becomes the platform legacy brands switch to at renewal | A marquee retail or airline RFP win | Existing live programs with two global brands [Imprint.co] and reported $1B+ valuation [PYMNTS, 2025] suggest commercial credibility for large-brand procurement |
| Beyond-credit expansion | Imprint adds debit, deposit, or rewards-currency products on top of the existing card stack, becoming a multi-product brand-finance platform | Launch of a non-credit product, signaled in post-Series D commentary | PYMNTS specifically reports Imprint is "looking beyond credit" following the $1B valuation [PYMNTS, 2025] |
| API-led embedded distribution | The public docs.imprint.co API surface becomes the integration path for a long tail of mid-market brands beyond the bespoke flagship deals | A self-serve or API-first program tier | Public developer documentation already exposes session, rewards, and payment-method endpoints [Imprint Docs] |
What compounding looks like. The flywheel starts with each new brand program adding cardholders, transaction volume, and underwriting data into the same underlying Imprint Core platform. More volume on the same stack improves underwriting precision (which lifts approval rates while holding loss rates), spreads fixed engineering and compliance costs across more programs (which improves contribution margin per program), and produces case studies that shorten the sales cycle for the next brand. The fact that Imprint built its initial issuing stack in six months on Stripe Issuing [Imprint Tech Blog] and has since invested in its own platform layers suggests the company is already past the point where each new program requires a from-scratch build. That is the early shape of a platform business rather than a services business.
The size of the win. A useful comparable, labeled as scenario rather than forecast, is the public market capitalization of large co-brand-adjacent issuers and program operators. Synchrony Financial, the largest pure-play US private-label and co-brand issuer, has historically traded in the $20B to $30B market cap range as a bank holding company. Imprint will not become a chartered bank, but if it captures even a single-digit percentage of US co-brand program economics over the next decade, the platform-software comparable set (which trades at higher revenue multiples than bank stocks) supports a multi-billion-dollar outcome (scenario, not a forecast). The $1B+ valuation reported at the Series D [PYMNTS, 2025] is a starting point for that compounding rather than a ceiling.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Scenario framing built on confirmed funding, product, and partnership facts from PYMNTS, Fortune, TechCrunch, CB Insights, and Imprint's own documentation.
Sources
PUBLIC
[Imprint.co] Imprint - Modern co-branded credit cards | https://imprint.co/
[Imprint.co] Imprint Careers | https://imprint.co/careers
[Imprint Tech Blog] Imprint Tech: Co-Branded Credit Cards for Great Brands | https://tech.imprint.co/
[Imprint Tech Blog] How Imprint built its card issuing platform in 6 months | https://tech.imprint.co/how-imprint-build-card-issuing-platform/
[Imprint Tech Blog] How Imprint built a modern and robust banking mobile app | https://tech.imprint.co/how-imprint-build-modern-banking-mobile-app/
[Imprint Docs] Welcome - Imprint Docs | https://docs.imprint.co/welcome
[Imprint Help Center] Help and disclosures | https://help.imprint.co/
[Imprint media assets] Important Credit Terms | https://media-assets.imprint.co/partners/thy/legal/asd-en
[Google Play] Imprint App on Google Play | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.imprint.consumer
[CB Insights, Dec 2025] Imprint - Products, Competitors, Financials, Employees, Headquarters Locations | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/imprint-1
[TechCrunch, Nov 2021] Meet Imprint, the fintech that just raised $38M from Kleiner Perkins, Stripe and Affirm | https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/15/meet-imprint-the-fintech-that-just-raised-38m-from-the-likes-of-kleiner-perkins-stripe-and-affirm/
[Business Wire, Nov 2021] Imprint Announces Kleiner Perkins-Led Series A Funding | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211115005859/en
[Fortune, Oct 2024] Imprint closes $75M Series C at $600M valuation | https://fortune.com/2024/10/10/imprint-credit-card-startup-75-million-series-c/
[PYMNTS, 2025] Imprint Looks Beyond Credit Following $1 Billion Valuation | https://www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2025/imprint-looks-beyond-credit-following-1-billion-valuation/
[ZoomInfo, June 2025] Imprint Partners overview and CTO appointment | https://www.zoominfo.com/c/imprint-partners/558205023
[Crunchbase] Imprint Company Profile and Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/imprint-cd0f
[PitchBook] Imprint Company Profile | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/458649-28
[Glassdoor] Working at Imprint.com | https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Imprint-com-EI_IE1086822.11,22.htm
[AshbyHQ] Imprint Open Roles | https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/imprint
Articles about Imprint
- Imprint Is Building Co-Branded Credit Cards for Booking.com and Rakuten Customers — The New York fintech has raised roughly $338M across four rounds, betting brands want to run their own card programs without becoming banks.