Miami-based ClassWallet raises $1.9 million in seed funding
ClassWallet, a platform for school systems to disburse and track funds, has closed a $1.9 million round of seed financing, the company said Monday.
Investors include NewSchools Venture Seed Fund, Kaplan Ventures, William Guttman, as well as several edtech and fintech angel investors. Accelerated Growth Partners and other leading Miami-based angel investors, including MaverixLab, founded by former Noodle CEO Joe Morgan, continued their support by contributing to the round. ClassWallet is a graduate of the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator, powered by Techstars. Total funding raised to date by ClassWallet is $2.53 million.
The Miami-based company will use the funding for sales and product development. The team plans to release the next version of its platform this summer, which will include a reloadable ClassWallet debit card and a Pay by ClassWallet API for vendors to integrate, said Jamie Rosenberg, ClassWallet’s founder and CEO. “As school budgets shrink, an increasingly larger portion of procurement is being funded by corporations, foundations, parents and teachers to meet student needs," said Rosenberg. "The size of this market, up to $23 billion annually, and the amount of inefficiency and lack of transparency is staggering.”
Organizations and school districts using ClassWallet include Harrington Park School District, Albuquerque Public Schools Education Foundation, Reading is Fundamental, Broward Education Foundation and others. Companies including Amazon, Office Depot, Best Buy, School Specialty, Scholastic and 40 more accept ClassWallet as a form of payment. Each provides ClassWallet with SKU level purchasing data, which makes tracking and reconciling of purchases seamless. Most recently, Marqeta, the program manager behind Facebook and eBay’s card platforms, joined forces with ClassWallet to power the ClassWallet debit card for offline purchases such as professional development and field trips.
Rosenberg launched AdoptAClassroom.org, one of the first crowd-funding sites and national education philanthropy platforms on the Internet, in 1998.
This story was originally published July 13, 2015 at 2:51 PM with the headline "Miami-based ClassWallet raises $1.9 million in seed funding."