Upwardli

Founded as Upwardli targeting immigrant credit-building directly, the company pivoted toward a B2B platform model — rebranding to Upward Financial — offering Credit Builder as a Service (CBaaS) for other fintechs and platforms to embed credit-building products under their own brand. The $8M seed round in late 2025 funded the acceleration of this infrastructure play, enabling partners like Afriex to launch branded credit-builder features without building their own compliance, underwriting, or banking infrastructure. Upward now positions itself as the 'turnkey credit product layer' — analogous to how Marqeta handles card issuing — but for credit-building, secured cards, and bill payment reporting.