BlackFin Tech Weekly — July 12th
Dear fintech folks,
This week was pretty calm after a record-breaking first half of the year (more on this here). While the sun is finally out, at least in our region of the world, start-up deal announcements seem to finally be taking a well-deserved break!
That said, this wasn’t a blank week either. We still had some great news and the biggest deal of the week shows that emerging neobank’s big rounds are not dead. Well done to Bunq for raising this stunning €193m Series A.
In total this week, more than €566m were raised across 16 deals. After Bunq, the Second place goes to Younited Credit with a massive $170m round. Pleo takes third place with its $150m round!
Geography-wise, we’ve identified 4 deals from Sweden, and 3 from UK. So far, we were used to seeing Sweden making it to the rankings in terms of amount raised and not specifically in number of deals, thanks to Klarna’s mega-rounds. This week definitely shows some great things are happening over there at earlier stage as well!
Then 2 deals from France, and Austria, and 1 respectively in the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, and Denmark.
Subsector-wise, there were 8 deals in Banktech. We reported 3 deals in Insurtech, 2 from Investment Banking and Payments while Wealth Management represented 1 deal.
Let’s have a closer look at this list:
Bunq raised €193m:
- This Series A was led by Pollen Street Capital, while the founder Ali Niknam is also participating in the round. As part of the deal, Bunq is also acquiring Capitalflow Group, an Irish lending company.
- Bunq, offers bank accounts and debit cards that you can control from a mobile app, is said to have a valuation of around $1.9bn. Bunq expects to break even on a monthly basis in 2021. The company passed €1 billion in user deposits earlier this year.
- Bunq expects to acquire smaller companies to fuel its growth strategy. Challenger banks have also represented a highly competitive market and Bunq bets that there will be some consolidation at some point.
Younited Credit raised $170m:
- Goldman Sachs is leading the round with existing investors Eurazeo, Bpifrance and AG2R La Mondiale also participating.
- Younited Credit, a France-based consumer credit provider with a data-driven, AI-based approach. So far, Younited Credit has granted more than €2.4 billion in credit. It operates in five European countries, but France is still the company’s leading market.
- Younited Credit intends to use the funds to double down on embedded finance with buy now, pay later products.
Pleo raised $150m:
- The round was co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital.
- Danish start-up Pleo, which sells corporate expense management software and linked payment cards, has boosted its valuation to $1.7 billion in this financing round. Pleo makes about 70% of its revenue from interchange fees taken from a merchant’s bank account every time a customer uses their card.
- Pleo plans to use the fresh funds to boost its presence in countries like the U.K. and ramp up marketing and PR. Finally, the company was on track to reach $100m in annual recurring revenue.
Congrats also to Juni, Willa, Insurello, Arex Markets, Blockpit, Toqio, Coincover, Single.earth, Assurly, Stockrepublic, StepEx and Villacircle.
See you next week !
