BlackFin Tech Weekly — November 22nd
Dear fintech folks,
This week was a bit quieter in terms of deal count and size, but we still have some very interesting stuff to share with you. As VCs, we love telling stories!
Last week, €32m was raised across 9 deals. Congratulations to Pomelo Pay, a UK B2B mobile payment solution that raised a $10m round! Bound, a currency hedging platform for SMEs also based in the UK comes second with a £6.5m raise. The third startup on our podium is the French investment platform Mon Petit Placement, which raised a €6m Venture round!
Geography-wise, we noticed that the majority of the deals (3) came from the UK, with France and Germany following closely (2 deals each). We also have one deal from Spain, and one from Finland.
Subsector-wise, most of the deals are from the Banktech sector (4), 2 are Regtech, and one each are in Payments and Wealth Management.
Let’s dive in:
Pomelo Pay raised $10m:
· The British mobile payment technology raised a large round led by Inference Partners and in which Force Over Mass also took part.
· Pomelo Pay allows merchants to digitize their payment infrastructure both online and in physical stores. Use cases include QR code payment, online shop, payment link, and more.
· The company processed more than $500m in total payments in 2021 and is integrated with 30 payment networks globally.
Bound raised £6.5m:
- The British currency hedging company raised a large Seed round led by Valar Ventures, in which Moonfire and Album VC also took part.
- Based in London, the company says it targets a “massively underserved” market as “only 4% of UK SMEs protect themselves from currency risk, compared to more than 9 in 10 Fortune 500 companies”.
- Bound allows those companies to use some of the hedging tools used by FX traders like spot, forward, and option rates, but through a simple interface that is much more accessible to non-experts.
Mon Petit Placement raised €6m:
- The company raised this venture round with Aonia Ventures, French Founders, Mandalore Partners, Weaving Invest Fund, and French Tech Seed.
- Mon Petit Placement’s goal is to “move the French from the status of savers to that of investors” by offering 4 life insurance products with different levels of risk and thus different return potentials. The products are accessible and manageable through a mobile app, on which a new user can open an account in less than 10 minutes by completing KYC and a form to assess the risk profile.
- In less than 2 years since its launch in February 2020, the company onboarded more than 800 customers and manages roughly €30m.
Congrats also to Pockid, Defacto, Sego Finance, Iconicchain, Plan3t, and Suade!
See you next week!
