Avtal Raises $24M to Modernize the Debt Collection Industry

Debt collection is one of the most operationally demanding and compliance-sensitive sectors in financial services, yet for decades it has run largely on manual processes, fragmented technology, and outdated outreach methods. Texas-based Avtal is determined to change that. The company has announced a $24 million raise in combined Series A and Seed funding, led by S3 Ventures with participation from NJP Ventures and LLC Ventures. The capital will be used to scale Avtal’s engineering team and accelerate the development of a digital infrastructure platform it believes will define the next generation of debt collection.

What Avtal Is Building?

Avtal describes itself as the digital engagement service powering modern collections. At its core, the platform is a fully white-labeled SaaS solution built specifically for third-party debt collection agencies. It combines omnichannel digital outreach, including email and text messaging, with a self-serve consumer payment portal that allows individuals to view their account balances, set up customised payment plans, and resolve debts on their own schedule, without needing to speak to a collector.

The platform integrates directly with agencies’ existing call centre operations and CRM systems, functioning as a digital layer that works in parallel with, rather than replacing, human-led collections activity.

The business model is deliberately aligned with client outcomes. Avtal charges no upfront costs and no monthly minimums. Instead, the company earns a percentage of what it helps its clients collect, meaning its incentives are directly tied to recovery performance. This performance-based structure is a notable departure from the subscription models common in enterprise software and signals confidence in the measurable impact the platform delivers.

The Problem the Industry Has Been Waiting to Solve

The debt collection industry sits at an awkward intersection. Traditional agencies have deep expertise in call centre operations and regulatory compliance, but rely on outdated, largely manual workflows. Digital-first agencies have modernised their consumer outreach through email and text but often lack the operational rigour that creditors and regulators expect. Avtal’s founders identified this gap and built a platform specifically designed to bridge it, bringing the precision and automation of digital communications into the operationally disciplined environment of established collection agencies.

The compliance dimension is particularly important in this sector. Debt collection is governed by a layered framework of federal, state, and local regulation, including the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and its implementing regulation, Regulation F, as well as telecom carrier policies and mailbox provider standards. Avtal’s platform is engineered to ensure agencies remain compliant across all these requirements, handling the complexity of regulatory adherence automatically rather than leaving it to agency staff to navigate manually.

A Team Built for This Moment

What makes Avtal’s pitch credible is the depth of experience its leadership team brings to a notoriously specialised industry. Founder and President Joe Gelbard spent two decades in fintech and digital collections, previously serving as Chief Revenue Officer at InDebted, TrueAccord, and LiveVox. CEO Khaled Bitar brings a different but complementary background, having co-founded LeftLane Software, a platform modernising subprime auto lending, and previously served as a consultant at Bain and Company before completing an MBA at the Wharton School.

Chief Growth Officer John McNamara is a former Principal Assistant Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he was a core member of the team that authored Regulation F, giving Avtal a direct line to the regulatory thinking that shapes the industry. CTO Chad Oliver brings enterprise-grade technical leadership from prior roles at Babylon Health and PayPal.

This combination of regulatory authority, operational collections experience, and consumer fintech engineering is precisely what a platform in this space needs to earn the trust of agencies that operate under significant legal and reputational scrutiny.

Avtal’s Results That Speak for Themselves

Avtal’s early client results provide compelling evidence that the platform works in practice. A mid-sized Utah collections agency partnered with Avtal to improve email deliverability after major mailbox providers tightened spam thresholds, and now collects more than one million dollars monthly from email outreach alone, with sustained consumer click rates of 27 percent against an industry average of around 3 percent. A California agency that rolled out Avtal’s platform methodically saw its monthly revenue grow from two thousand dollars in its first month to over half a million dollars by month six, with no additional headcount required.

Another client, Sentry, saw payment plans increase eightfold once plan options were tied to consumers’ pay schedules, alongside meaningfully improved scorecard performance that helped the agency win new business from creditors.

Across its client base, Avtal reports that agencies using its platform increase liquidation rates by 50 to 75 percent on placements already being worked through phone and mail. That uplift, delivered through digital channels that operate continuously without requiring additional staffing, represents a structural improvement in economics for collection agencies facing persistent pressure on margins and increasing difficulty attracting and retaining staff.

Why This Funding Round Matters?

Avtal’s $24 million raise arrives at a moment when the debt collection industry faces mounting pressure to modernise. Consumer expectations around digital self-service have risen sharply across all financial services categories. Regulators have made clear that digital communications must meet the same compliance standards as traditional methods. And creditors are increasingly evaluating their collection agency partners on scorecard metrics that digital engagement can directly improve. Avtal’s platform sits precisely at the intersection of all these forces.

The investment from S3 Ventures, a firm with a strong track record backing enterprise software companies in Texas and beyond, alongside NJP Ventures and LLC Ventures, validates the market opportunity and the team’s ability to capture it. With fresh capital behind it, Avtal is now positioned to scale its engineering capabilities, deepen its platform, and extend its reach across an industry that is, by most accounts, only at the beginning of its digital transformation.

For collection agencies still navigating the tension between traditional operations and the demands of a digital-first consumer landscape, Avtal’s timing, team, and technology may represent exactly the infrastructure moment the sector has been waiting for.