Sunbit Receives Funding to Expand POS Financing

Los Angeles-based Sunbit specializes in financing in-store purchases through funding technology at the point of sale. Sunbit says the investment will help adoption of the technology in retail markets such as automotive services, dental, eyewear and veterinary services.

“In an industry crowded with e-commerce and moonshot solutions, it was refreshing to find a company innovating on the simple but important point-of-sale transaction,” Oren Zeev, founding partner of Zeev Ventures, said in a Thursday press release.

“People need to get their cars fixed, their pets cared for, glasses so that they can see — health and safety aren’t things people should be forced to wait for or walk away from because there aren’t good solutions to help them then and there,” Zeev added.

By not relying solely on a FICO score and instead utilizing machine learning to generate personalized payment options, Sunbit says it is helping all consumers, including the underbanked.

“I’ve been there,” Sunbit CEO Arad Levertov said in the release. “As an immigrant, like many young people and those with poor access to credit, I was denied financing at the point of sale.”

The incident helped him “understand how humiliating it is to be denied in public, after spending time filling out a laborious application, in front of your wife and kids,” Levertov added.