BlackFin Tech Weekly — March 15th
Hello everyone,
Special week for us since we are hosting our first ClubHouse room called “Money time European Fintech review” which will take place in Tuesday, March 16th at 1:30pm (Paris time). We will be talking about the future of online payments and, of course, the hottest European fintech deals of the past month.
For this first edition, we will have 2 special guests with us: Louis Chatriot CEO of Alma which recently raised a €49m Series B, and Todd Clyde CEO of Token which raised a $15m Series B earlier this year. Join us!
We recorded 7 fundraisings for European fintechs last week, for a total raised of c. €460m. Shout out to Starling Bank, the B2B neobank and winner of the week, which raised £272m from Fidelity Management & Research, Qatar Investment Authority, RPMI Railpen, Millennium Management. Second place goes to Zego and its $150m round. Silvr is ranked third with its €3m funding round.
Geography- wise, the UK led the week with 2 fundraisings and c. €450m raised! France and Germany share the second position with 2 deals each this week. We also spoted a deal in Austria with Cashy, a pawnbroking start-up.
Subsector-wise, 4 deals were in the Banktech, 1 in Insurtech and 1 in Regtech. There was also 1 deal in Wealth Management.
Let’s dive in:
Starling Bank raises £270m:
- Starling Bank, a B2B neobank, was launched in 2017 in the UK. Since launching in 2017, it has opened more than 2 million accounts, including more than 300 000 small business accounts.
- Series D funding round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, alongside Qatar Investment Authority, RPMI Railpen, the investment manager for the £31bn Railways Pension Scheme, and Millennium Management.
- The capital will be deployed primarily to support a targeted expansion of Starling’s lending in the UK, as well as to launch Starling in Europe and for anticipated M&A.
Zego raises $150m:
- Zego, a trading name of Extracover, offers commercial motor insurance for businesses, from self-employed drivers and riders to fleets of vehicles, spanning pay-as-you-go insurance to annual policies.
- This Series C funding — which helped the company reach the unicorn status with $1.1bn pre-money valuation — was led by DST Global and included also General Catalyst.
- Proceeds will be used for Zego’s expansion plans for “Europe and beyond” and to double its workforce to over 500 employees by the end of 2021.
Silvr raises €3m:
- Less than a year after its creation in 2020, the fintech closes this round of financing to accelerate its development in France and democratize Revenue Based Financing.
- Silvr has developed a financing model for e-commerce players, including direct-to-consumer brands (D2C), digital native vertical brands (DNVB), online stores and marketplaces, to enable them to finance their growth while retaining their entire capital.
- ISAI, Idinvest et Serena Capital and some renowned business angels partcipated in this round.
Congrats also to Elucidate, Welyb, Moonfare and Cashy.
Have a great week everyone, stay safe & keep powering on!
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- Don’t forget to join our ClubHouse event tomorrow!
