Steve Cohen is backing a ‘virtual credit card’ app
Billionaire hedge funder Steve Cohen wants to make life easier for cash-strapped freelancers.
Point72 Ventures, the venture capital arm of Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, led a $3 million financing round for Extend, a mobile app that lets businesses share temporary access to their corporate credit cards with freelancers.
The idea is to sidestep “the challenges of reimbursement” and “awkward situations” where freelancers and other contractors have to front costs, Matthew Granade of Point72 told The Post.
“It’s the equivalent of doing a purchase order,” he added.
The app works by using a corporate Mastercard or Visa to generate a virtual credit card that carries a different number, expiration date, and CVV code. The numbers can be set to expire after a certain time or after a certain spending limit is reached.
For online purchases, a freelancer can simply enter in the temporary numbers. For in-store purchases, Extend creates a barcode that can be used like ApplePay. Merchants also can key in the data from the virtual card displayed on the freelancer’s phone.
Extend hopes to “minimize misuse and the lengthy reimbursement process” while letting companies reap the card loyalty points, Extend chief executive Andrew Jamison told The Post.
So far “there’s no easy way to distribute money to individuals to get a production together,” Jamison added.
Point72 Ventures’ investment in Extend comes on the heels of two other plays in the fintech space. Earlier this month it invested in Say, an platform that aims to give a greater voice to shareholders; and Imperative Execution, a dark-pool trading platform.
The two-year old venture capital firm invests money from Cohen’s personal fortune as well as that of Point72 employees.
Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management recently began managing outside money following a two-year ban by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused Cohen in 2016 of failing to supervise traders convicted of insider trading at his previous firm SAC Capital.