A California-based financial technology company will expand into Utah, bringing more than 500 jobs.
Deserve Inc. made the announcement last week after being approved for a state incentive by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development board. The incentive is tied to 258 jobs that will have average pay of $70,000.
The $1.2 million project in Taylorsville represents a large expansion for the company, which currently has about 65 employees at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and at an engineering center in India.
“Salt Lake Valley’s diverse and entrepreneurial talent pool and business-friendly environment provide Deserve with a unique opportunity to scale our operations while aligning with our entrepreneurial spirit and diverse culture,” Kalpesh Kapadia, founder and CEO of Deserve, said in a prepared statement. “We are proud to be a part of Utah’s thriving fintech ecosystem and add our expertise to this growing community of innovators.”
Deserve has created a credit card platform that it manages through both its own portfolio of customers and several third-party credit card programs. Third-party programs are managed either on the platform as fee-for-service or on an affinity basis in which Deserve owns the receivables. The company has about 71,500 portfolio customers and four platform and affinity customers.
One area of focus for the company has been to provide millennials and Generation Z with access to credit products and the tools to achieve financial independence. Its website indicates it has helped students gain access to credit on 5,000 campuses.
Deserve’s investors include Goldman Sachs, Sallie Mae, Accel, Pelion Venture Partners, Aspect Ventures and Mission Holdings.
Deserve is growing its credit platform service, and the new Utah jobs will support the business across a wide range of areas, including human resources, finance and accounting, customer service, operations management, program and project management, information technology, and training/talent development.
Tom Wadsworth, GOED associate managing director, told the GOED board that Taylorsville had lost a large employer in American Express. “And that’s been a big hit to their employment base, but this company is coming in, as it’s a fintech company, hiring 258 high-paying jobs but a significant number of other jobs as well, that will help backfill a lot of those jobs that have since left the area,” he said.
The GOED-approved incentive is a tax credit of up to $372,089. The project is expected to generate new wages of $44.1 million over five years and new state tax revenue of nearly $1.9 million during that time. The incentive is post-performance, meaning that each year that Deserve meets the criteria in its contract with the state, it will earn a portion of the total tax credit.
“We’re excited that Deserve has chosen to grow in Utah and add to the state’s robust fintech sector,” Val Hale, GOED executive director, said in a prepared statement. “The new high-paying jobs Deserve will create will support a wide range of areas, including human resources, information technology, finance and accounting.”
“Utah has a front-and-center role in the transformation of financial services and is one of the leading locations nationwide for fintech expansion with the skilled workforce to match,” said Theresa A. Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “We welcome Deserve to our state.”
GOED board chairman Jerry Oldroyd said the development of the fintech sector in Utah has been “really interesting.”
“We’re becoming a hub for fintech companies,” he said. “A lot of these companies that we’re seeing have had just novel business plans, novel approaches to credit. … It’s a significant sector of our economy now.”