Spense bags $1.85m to help banks scale secured credit cards in India

By Gloria Methri

Bengaluru-based FinTech startup Spense has secured $1.85 million in a pre-seed funding round led by GrowthCap Ventures, with participation from notable industry leaders.

Founded by Pawan Kumar and Srinivas Krishnamurthy, Spense is building programmable, compliant, and scalable financial infrastructure aimed at powering India’s next wave of banking innovation, particularly across secured card infrastructure, forex, and prepaid card products.

In contrast to the incremental upgrades often seen in the sector, Spense is taking a ground-up approach to rebuild the financial backbone for the following 100 million users, prioritising inclusion, speed, and regulatory clarity.

Speaking at the announcement, Pawan Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, Spense, said, “If someone has a fixed deposit, they should be able to get a credit card. It’s that simple. We’ve proven the model. Now it’s time to scale secured credit cards with every bank in India.” He added, “Our job is to make banking work quietly in the background—so people can access what they need, when they need it. We are here to help banks scale responsibly and FinTechs build faster—with confidence.”

Srinivas Krishnamurthy, Co-founder & CTO, noted that the new capital will be used to expand FinTech partnerships, onboard additional banks, and broaden the product and technology stack to address use cases beyond credit cards. Spense’s infrastructure is already integrated with multiple regulated entities and offers end-to-end regulatory oversight and auditability, while significantly reducing the time required to deploy secure credit programmes.

Pratekk Agarwaal, General Partner at GrowthCap Ventures, said, “Spense is solving one of the most overlooked problems in Indian finance—access. Millions are excluded not because they are unworthy of credit, but because the rails to reach them didn’t exist. What stood out to us was the team’s clarity, precision, and deep commitment to building a bank-grade 2.0 infrastructure that actually works at scale.”

As India continues to drive financial inclusion and modernisation, Spense’s platform aims to enable banks and FinTechs to build secure, compliant, and efficient credit offerings tailored for the country’s diverse and evolving consumer base.