TECHNOLOGY

Bread Gets Money for E-commerce Payment Program

Bread is a New York–headquartered finance technology company that lets merchants give their customers the option to pay for items in several installments over time.

Bread recently announced that it raised $126 million in equity and debt capital. It will use the new capital to build its slate of merchant partners and continue to build its engineering team and its experience at its website (www.getbread.com).

Silicon Valley, Calif.’s Menlo Ventures led the equity round. Also participating were Bessemer Venture Partners and RRE Ventures. Mark Siegel, Menlo’s managing partner, will be joining Bread’s board of directors.

Bread’s description of the company’s service is something akin to a retailer charge card. An online furniture store, for example, could use Bread’s technology as a way to allow customers to pay for a piece of furniture in monthly installments. The company claims that different payment plans and different experiences can be tailored to a merchant’s way of doing business.

“We are building online-focused, next-generation solutions,” Josh Abramowitz said. He is the cofounder and chief executive officer of Bread. “Bread’s technology offers a different type of solution. It is optimized for the Web and designed to bring purchase finance into the online era.”