Exclusive: Debt collection software maker Aktos raises $4.4M

Aktos, a debt collection SaaS startup, has raised a $4.4 million seed co-led by 8VC and Crew Capital, the company tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: The $20 billion debt collection industry has lacked modern software and innovation.

How it works: Aktos’ cloud-native software is designed to help third-party debt collection agencies manage their operations.

• That includes processing and entering all the data around debts placed to them, tracking communications with debtors, as well as processing payments and invoicing.
• “For a collector, it is their core system of record — every single thing that happens in a collection agency is going to be done in our software,” Aktos CEO Peter Wang says.

Details: Aktos’ software tracks all accounts an agency is working on, including contact information and a given person's debts and payment history.

• “It's structured like a sales CRM, but instead of keeping track of the sales leads, it keeps track of delinquent accounts,” Wang says.
• For compliance reasons, it tracks every phone call or letter sent to a consumer to ensure agencies aren’t running afoul of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulations.
• The software also manages all the bookkeeping around payments, remittances, commissions and invoices.

The bottom line: Like many new vertical SaaS solutions, Aktos hopes to bring a modern technology and payments stack to an industry largely reliant on outdated software.

• “We are competing with incumbent software that's 30 to 40 years old,” Wang says. “The [software] these debt collectors are using — they can't even run these programs on Windows laptops, because the programs predate Windows.”