BlackFin Tech Weekly — September 13th
Dear fintech folks,
Looks like we didn’t have to wait too long for big rounds to come back. And what’s better than a massive Buy Now Pay Later Series A round to kick off this new series?
Last week, €288m were raised across 19 deals. Congratulations to Scalapay, a BNPL Fintech which closed the largest Europan Series A round, raising $155m! Second, we have Marshmallow, the B2C Insurtech which raised an $85m Series B! Congratulations to the whole team there for this major achievement. Third place is held by the Insurtech Avantia and its £40,9m Venture Round!
Geography-wise, Italy is leading the list! This is definitely a sign that Fintech is having its moment there too. We also noted that 10 out of the 19 listed deals are headquartered in the UK. There we go with the UK dominating the scene one more week. Then 3 deals came from France, and finally, 1 each from Italia, Spain, the Netherlands, Estonia, Lettonia, Switzerland, and Sweden.
Subsector-wise, there were 8 deals in Banktech, 4 deals in Payments, and 3 in Wealth Management. In the meantime, they were 2 deals each in Investment Banking and Insurtech.
Let’s dive in:
Scalapay raised €131,6m:
· The Italian BNPL start-up raised this Series B at a valuation of $700 million, led by Tiger Global, and joined by Ithaca, Baleen Capital and, Fasanara Capital.
· Scalapay’s product integrates with e-retailers’ payment systems and allows customers to opt for payment in three installments, free of charge.
· According to Scalapay, merchants who use the service have seen their conversions increase by 11% and their average basket increase by 48%.
Marshmallow raised €72,2m:
- The British car insurance company has raised the Series B at a valuation of $1.25 billion from Passion Capital, Scor, and Investec, making it the UK’s latest unicorn.
- Based in London, Marshmallow is betting on its big data approach and better customer relations to differentiate itself from the competition.
- In less than a year, Marshmallow’s valuation has nearly quadrupled. Traction-wise, the company recently passed 100,000 policies sold in its home country, growing 100% over the last six months.
Avantia raised €48,1m:
- The company has raised this Venture Round from ECI Partners.
- Avantia is a virtual insurer, with machine learning technology and a data-led decisionning platform. Its cutting-edge technology gives it an effective online quotability of any household insurer in the UK.
- Avantia has invested heavily in its technology platform and predictive capabilities, with EBITDA doubling in the last four years to over £10m, whilst at the same time delivering consistent market-leading loss ratio performance.
Congrats also to Ledgy, Anyfin, Estate Guru, Horiz.io, Aurelia, Greenly, Jeff, Yavin, Homeppl, Fluency, Plend, Greengage, Dividebuy, Beseif, Greengrowth, and Koyo.
See you next week!
