BlackFin Tech Weekly — March 8th

Hi everyone !

Last week was stratospheric! After quite a calm time for the fintech world, last week took us back to January’s madness. Huge congrats to Klarna for its $1bn funding round!

Last week, European fintechs raised more than €965m across 16 deals. By far, the top fundraising of the week award is granted to Klarna, the BNPL provider for online shopper that raised $1bn from about thirty investors. Second place goes to Nextmarkets and its $30m round. Countingup is ranked third with its £9,1m Series A funding round.

Geography-wise, Germany led the week with 6 deals, followed by the UK with 5. France recorded 2 deals. There was also 1 deal respectively in Sweden, Spain and Estonia.

Subsector-wise, Banktech wins the bet with 5 deals. Otherwise, there were 3 deals in Payments and 3 in Insurtechs. Also, 2 respectively in Wealth Management and Regtech. There was also 1 deal in Investment Banking.

Let’s have a closer look:

Made with ❤ by BlackFin Tech

Klarna raises $1bn:

• Klarna, the BNPL solution, was launched in 2005 in Sweden.
• With its fundraising where more than 30 new and existing investors took part, Klarna’s valuation has almost been multiplied by 6 and reaches now $31bn. Klarna becomes the most valuable European startup, and its value is comparable to major financial houses such as Barclays, Credit Suisse and Swiss Re and is larger than Germany’s biggest lender Deutsche Bank.
• Klarna said it would pledge 1% of the capital raised to a newly created initiative that focuses on key sustainability challenges around the world and would launch on April 22 on World Earth Day.
• On the BNPL front, Klarna is active in more than 17 countries, and has over 250,000 retail partners, including Macys, H&M, Ikea, Expedia Group, Samsung, ASOS, Peloton, Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike and AliExpress.

Nextmarkets raises $30m:

• Founded in Cologne in 2014, Nextmarkets is a commission-free online broker in Europe for more than 7000 shares and 1000 ETFs.
• Nextmarkets raised $30m from Cryptology Asset Group and Francfort finlab
• In addition to Germany and Austria, six other countries — the United Kingdom, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy — were launched at the end of 2020. This round is aimed at further accelerating European expansion and make the company the first neobroker in Europe.

Countingup raises £9.1m Series A:

• Founded in 2017, Countingup is a business account and accounting software in one app, targeting self-employed people and small business owners.
• Its Series A funding round of £9.1m was raised from Framework Venture Partners and Gresham House ventures.
• Countingup currently has more than 34,000 professional customers. The company’s long-term vision is to be the only “financial centre” for microenterprises in the UK and beyond.

Congrats also to Wegift, Hepster, Mansa, ClearGlass Analytics, Card-dynamics, Unslashed Finance, Monite, CoinFLEX, Forgetfinance, Statice, Codat, Apiax and FinanzRitter.

See you next week!

If you wish to receive BlackFin Tech posts straight into your inbox and stay updated, click here