Early stage European FinTech deals include Osu, Finway, Vega. We feature Q&As with Richard Olsen from Lykke, Nigel Verdon of Railsbank and Maximilian Schausberger of Elevator Ventures.
Scaling Enterprise FinTech | The Handbook is out!
Launched in partnership with SixThirty Ventures and Finovate Europe, The Handbook includes proprietary research on ca. 65 Enterprise FinTech scaleups in #Europe, Q&As with 16 founders who have “been there and done it” as well as insights from 10 leading #venturecapital investors. Whether you are a founder with an idea, an early stage startup looking for inspiration and learnings, or an investor or financial institution looking to understand the difficult but rewarding journey to building a world-class Enterprise FinTech firm – download the Handbook here: http://www.fintechforum.de/sef/
If you are an early stage startup in Europe building the next big thing in FinTech, reach out to Frank Schwab or Samarth Shekhar.
7 Questions with Richard Olsen from Lykke
About Lykke: Lykke bridges the gap between traditional finance and Blockchain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_aLZ_rtkhs
http://www.fintechforum.de/7-questions-with-richard-olsen-from-lykke/
Scaling Enterprise FinTech: with Nigel Verdon of Railsbank
1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your company.
Railsbank is the leading global Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform. It enables banks, businesses and brands to define the future of consumer and SME finance.
Marketers, product managers, developers, CEOs and founders are able to take their financial product vision and rapidly prototype, launch and scale using Railsbank’s open finance platform which consists of operations, regulatory licensing and a rich set of APIs.
Railsbank was founded by myself and Clive Mitchell in 2016, in London.
http://www.fintechforum.de/scaling-enterprise-fintech-with-nigel-verdon-of-railsbank/
Scaling Enterprise FinTech: with Maximilian Schausberger of Elevator Ventures
1. A year since the first lockdowns- is this is a good time to be building or scaling an Enterprise FinTech (/InsurTech) firm in Europe?
Despite all the difficulties that 2020 has brought for entrepreneurs, some sectors have also benefited. We see Enterprise FinTech benefiting from an increased need for digitalization and for efficient operations in banking and insurance. As an example from the financial sector, Raiffeisen Bank International saw double-digit growth in its mobile banking users over the first half of 2020 (see here). This also creates many opportunities, which seem to have fueled investor appetite in 2020.
Creandum plus Ada Ventures, Breega and angel investors invest £2,25M in Osu
Launched in 2020 by co-founders Noam Nevo, Daniel Scott and Alon Zion, Osu provides an app for the self-employed to manage and grow their business via instant payments, modern professional invoicing, and automated payment reminders.
The round was led by Creandum plus Ada Ventures, Breega and angel investors including Charles Delingpole, Will Neale and Michael Pennington.
Creandum is an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on technology companies within the consumer, software, and hardware industries, whose recent investments include Craft and Payosu.
https://www.finsmes.com/2021/03/osu-raises-2-25m-in-seed-funding.html
Btov Partners und der 10x Group um Szenekopf Felix Haas investieren 2,1 Millionen Euro in Finway
Finway bietet ein Ausgabenmanagement für kleine und mittelständischen Unternehmen. Es geht darum, die Kontrolle über Budgets und Ausgaben zu behalten. Die Plattform soll eine engere Zusammenarbeit zwischen Finanz- und Fachabteilungen ermöglichen, heißt es von dem Unternehmen. Finway wurde 2020 von Csaba Krümmer, Jennifer Dussileck und Philipp Rieger gegründet.
Das Münchner Startup Finway hat in seiner Seed-Runde 2,1 Millionen Euro von Btov Partners und der 10x Group um Szenekopf Felix Haas eingesammelt.
btov Partners is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in digital and industrial technology companies, whose recent investments include Blacklane and Volocopter.
Arrington Capital and Cumberland DRW, with participation from Coinbase Ventures etc. invest $5M in Vega
Led by Barney Mannerings, Founder, Vega aims to democratize markets by enabling anyone to create and launch a derivatives market while eliminating centralized gatekeepers and decentralizing governance, allowing for instant settlement (< 1 sec), removing conflict of interest from markets, reducing fees, and enabling the throughput (up to 10K TPS) necessary for high-volume derivatives trading.
The round was led by Arrington Capital and Cumberland DRW, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Signum Capital, CMT Digital, CMS Holdings, Three Commas, GSR, SevenX Ventures, ZeePrime Capital, The DeFi Alliance, Aave CEO & Founder Stani Kulechov, Enzyme Finance Founder Mona El Isa, Co-Founder and CEO of Terraform Labs (TFL) Do Kwon, and CEO and Co-Founder of Kyber Network Loi Luu, Hashed, Eden Block, Greenfield One, KR1, gumi Cryptos Capital, and Monday Capital.
Arrington XRP Capital is a digital asset management firm in blockchain-based capital markets, whose recent investment include PureStake and Esprezzo.
https://www.finsmes.com/2021/03/vega-closes-5m-funding-round.html
Kreos Capital invests €10M in Amsterdam-based branded payments company Recharge.com
Recharge.com plans to use the capital to further enhance its mobile offering, extend its product range, and accelerate its international expansion.
Kreos Capital is based in London and specialises in providing financing for high-growth companies.
Kreos Capital is a growth debt firm that provides financing solutions for high-growth companies across Europe and Israel, whose recent investments include PlusDental and Recharge.com.
https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/recharge-com-raises-10m/
Frumtak Ventures and Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures invest €10M in Fintech startup Meniga
The funds will be used to expand its sales and service teams, as well as develop green banking products.
Frumtak Ventures invests in teams and ideas that solve real-world problems and reinforces Iceland’s reputation for profitable innovation, whose recent investments include SidekickHealth and Controlant.
Additional Investors:
British Business Bank, Groupe BPCE, Industrifonden, Swedbank, UniCredit, Íslandsbanki
https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/fintech-startup-meniga-rakes-in-10m
Dänischer Tech-Investor Founders und Freiburger Haufe Group investieren €25M in die Berliner Onlinebank für Freelancer und Selbstständige Kontist
Kontist will das Kapital schwerpunktmäßig in die Erweiterung des Steuerserviceangebots investieren. „Wir wollen der Gruppe der Selbstständigen Dienstleistungen zur Verfügung stellen, mit deren Hilfe ihre Arbeit gerade auch in Corona-Zeiten deutlich erleichtert wird“, sagt Plantener, Gründer und Chef von Kontist.
Benjamin Esser, seit Ende 2020 Co-CEO, erklärt konkret: „Wir lesen die Transaktions-Daten unserer Kunden automatisch aus, was es der Kontist Steuerberatung erlaubt, den Buchhaltungs- und Steuerprozess deutlich effizienter zu gestalten.“
Angeführt wird die Runde vom dänischen Tech-Investor Founders, der die von Christoph Plantener im Jahr 2016 gegründete Firma seit Beginn begleitet.
Mitgezogen ist auch die Freiburger Haufe Group, die sich bereits in der Series-A-Runde engagierte. Dem Vernehmen nach entfiel auf Founders ein Anteil von 60 Prozent oder 15 Millionen Euro.
Unternehmen den Weg ins digitale Zeitalter bereiten. Und dabei den Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft schaffen. Das ermöglicht die Haufe Group. Mit Kompetenz, Leidenschaft und Erfahrung. Kontist war ihre letzte Investition.
KKR, with participation from existing investors Sapphire Ventures and Citi Ventures invests $200M in Feedzai
Led by Nuno Sebastiao, CEO and Chairman, Feedzai provides a cloud-based comprehensive financial crime prevention and risk management solution used by financial institutions, payment providers, and merchants to manage the risk of financial crime while enabling an optimized experience for end-users. The core of its offering is its artificial intelligence and machine learning platform, which processes customer and third-party data to identify, assess, and accelerate the remediation of potential threats.
The round was led by KKR, which will be making the investment through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II, a fund dedicated to growth equity investment opportunities in the technology space, with participation from existing investors Sapphire Ventures and Citi Ventures.
KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, credit and real assets, with strategic partners that manage hedge funds.
https://www.finsmes.com/2021/03/feedzai-raises-200m-in-series-d-funding.html
DST Global, VY Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners invest $300M (approx €254M) in Blockchain.com
Founded by Benjamin Reeves, Nicolas Cary, and Peter Smith, Blockchain.com offers a crypto wallet that lets users buy, sell, hold, send, receive, and earn interest in the wallet brokerage with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
The UK company offers retail trading and other services for professional investors including credit, structured products, trading, and custody.
The round was led by DST Global, VY Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The latest funding round comes just a few weeks after the company announced a $120M (approx €101M) funding that valued it at $3B (approx €2.5M). According to CB Insights, the latest funding is the third-largest in the industry’s short history.
DST Global is an investment company that funds late-stage ventures in the global internet industry, whose recent investments include Fetch Rewards and Nice Tuan.
https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/blockchain-com-secures-254m/
Fintech firm Broadridge to acquire trading technology provider Itiviti for over €2 billion
Fintech firm Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Itiviti, a provider of trading and connectivity technology to the capital markets industry, from Nordic Capital.
Broadridge and Itiviti have signed a definitive agreement for all-cash transaction. The deal is valued at €2.143 billion(approximately $2.5 billion).
The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2021.
Headquartered in Stockholm, Itiviti has offices in 16 countries and serves 24 of the top 25 global investment banks and more than 2,000 brokers, trading firms and asset managers across 50 countries.
Finch Capital acquires Wirecard Turkey
Finch Capital, the early-stage fintech VC with a presence in London and Amsterdam, is acquiring Wirecard Turkey, a subsidiary of Wirecard, the disgraced fintech out of Germany. The acquisition, for which terms remain undisclosed and is still subject to regulatory approval, sees Finch create a new Ireland-registered entity called Nomu Pay.
After facing a huge accounting scandal and failing to make payments on its own loans, Wirecard went into insolvency last year. Since then, various parts of its business have been bought, including one of its largest assets, Wirecard Solutions, which was acquired by the U.K.’s Railsbank.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/30/finch-capital-acquires-wirecard-turkey/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
Sweden’s Online Crypto Broker Safello Acquires Cryptocurrency Platform Bitcoin.se
Safello, an online cryptocurrency brokerage that is regulated as a financial institution with Finansinspektionen (Swedish FSA), announced on Monday it has acquired Rational Money AB, the company behind Bitcoin.se, a Sweden-based educational portal on cryptocurrencies.
Safello claims that since 2012, Bitcoin.se has played a vital role in informing and educating about topics related to cryptocurrencies and surrounding ecosystem.
“The acquisition comes after a successful partnership period between Safello and Bitcoin.se, where the latter has used Safello’s Partner Widget product. Bitcoin.se contributed to trades generating a significant part of Safello’s turnover during the past six months.”
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