Copenhagen-based paytech startup, Cardlay, raised €8M in a fresh round of funding from Javier Perez’s VC fund Global PayTech Ventures. In addition to the investment, Perez, the former President of Mastercard Europe, joins Cardlay’s board as vice-chairman.
Founded in 2016 by Jørgen Christian Juul, Cardlay provides a white label payments solution that integrates cards and expense management in intelligent and intuitive platforms offering real-time overviews.
UK-based Payments-as-a-Service fintech startup, Modulr, has secured strategic investment from FIS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Fortune 500 US financial services firm FIS. FIS joins Paypal Ventures as an investor in Modulr, which inveted £9 million in November 2020.
Founded in 2015, the London headquarterd fintech start-up enables payments infrastructure and is capitalising on the B2B payments digitisation opportunity across Europe for other fintechs including Revolut, Iwoca, Sage and Mode. Its platform powers users to automate payment flows, embed payments into the platform, and build new payment products and services themselves from a single API. Modulr has direct access to the Bank of England and claims to facilitate a fast experience that digital customers demand.
Ramp, a fintech startup that offers corporate cards and software for managing employee expenses, raised $115 million in a funding round led by digital payments giant Stripe and D1 Capital Partners, valuing it at $1.6 billion.
Foundd in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Gene Lee and Karim Atiyeh, New York-based startup competes with the likes of American Express, new-age fintech startups such as Brex and older expense management software makers like Expensify and SAP Concur. Ramp said it would use the fresh capital to hire more and boost its marketing efforts, partnerships and product development.
UK fintech TrueLayer has raised US$70 million in Series D funding led by Addition, the venture capital firm founded by former Tiger Global partner Lee Fixel. Existing investors such as Anthemis Group, Connect Ventures, Mouro Capital, Northzone and Temasek Holdings from Singapore also invested. The funds will be used to expand its services internationally and expand its presence in Europe first before attempting a rollout in Australia.
With TrueLayer, fintech apps like Revolut and Freetrade can be connected to customers’ bank accounts using technologies known as APIs or application programming interfaces. This means that users of these apps can then make payments from their bank or view balances and transactions from different accounts.
Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer, said that due to strong growth in 2020, the company decided to raise more money, helped not least by the coronavirus pandemic and the shift of consumers to digital management methods their finances.
SumUp, the London based payments startup, announced that it has raised a €750 million debt facility from Bain Capital Credit, Temasek, Crestline, Goldman Sachs and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management.
SumUp is a payment technology company that enables businesses to accept card payments at the Point-of-Sale or on the go. The company was founded in 2011 by Daniel Klein, Jan Deepen, Marc-Alexander Christ, Petter Made and Stefan Jeschonnek. The latest funding round will enable the company to grow inorganically through M&A, accelerate international expansion and grow its employee base.
Canada based point-of-sale (“POS”) and buy-now-pay-later (“BNPL”) fintech Flexiti Financial got acquired by Curo Group Holdings Corp. (NYSE: CURO) for a cobied cash and contingent payment of $122 million. Curo Group is a lender to non-prime consumers. The acquisition enables Curo access to Canada’s credit card and POS financing markets.
Apart from a cash consideration of $86 million, the acquisition included a contingent consideration of upto $36 million payable on the fulfillment of revenue and origination targets over the next two years.
In connection with the acquisition, Flexiti and a related entity refinanced and expanded its nonrecourse asset-backed warehouse financing facility from $300m to $395m funded by Credit Suisse and SPF Securitized Products Master Fund.
Africa based payments fintech startup Flutterwave joins the unicorn club today as it announced the completion of its Series C funding round of $170 million led by Avenir Growth Capital and Tiger Global with participation of existing investors DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, PayPal, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, WorldpayFIS and 9yards Capital.
Flutterwave was founded in 2016 by Olugbenga Agboola with the mission to create a pan-African digital payments platform. With the current round, the company has now raised a total of $225 million since inception and is a leader among Afican fintech startups. The raised funds will enable the company to follow its vision of become a leading global payments company by connecting the highly fragmented African digital payments landscape. The raised funds will enable Flutterwave to accelerate customer acquisition and continue development of innovative payment products.
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the IFC Financial Institutions Growth Fund, are helping to increase access to digital payment solutions for small and medium-sized businesses in several countries in Africa through an investment in South Africa-based fintech group Adumo.
IFC’s investments will support Adumo to make digital payment systems more affordable and accessible to smaller businesses in Africa, many of which currently rely on cash transactions. Adumo, South Africa’s largest independent payment provider with a presence in 14 other African countries, owns merchant acquirers Sureswipe and Ikhokha and payment processor Innervation Pan African Payments.
Eco, a digital wallet for saving and spending, today announced an investment round of over $26 million led by a16z Crypto, with participation from Founders Fund, Activant Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Slow Ventures, and more than one hundred others. This comes after Eco raised more than $8.5 million led by Expa and Pantera Capital.
With Eco, users earn up to 5% annually on their deposits and also get 5% cashback on spending at major merchants. Eco is developing features to help users pay bills, send money to friends, and more — all from the same, single wallet.
Kenyan e-commerce start-up, Powered by People, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to expand its team and grow its fintech platform for local retailers.
The round was led by Matt Kalish of DraftKings and TBD Angels.
The funding will be used to expand its team and grow its fintech platform for local retailers.
Other angel investors who are affiliates with DraftKings, Skillz and Uber, and impact investors, Good+Well, also participated in the round.
Powered by People’s previous investors and financial supporters include Founders Factory Africa, Mercy Corps and the Mastercard Foundation.
Powered by People is a mobile-first, distributed manufacturing system offering online tools, financing solutions, and a B2B marketplace to the small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the creative manufacturing and handmade sector.
The start-up connects handmade and natural cosmetic producers across Africa, Asia and Latin America via a wholesale platform, offering retailers credit lines with flexible payments, discovery of diverse global brands and products, and the ability to customise products for exclusive offers in their store.
Its brands are global suppliers to companies such as William Sonoma, IKEA, Crate and Barrel, Nordstroms and Goop, among others.
