News
In the latest development, Rapyd, a London-based Fintech as a Service company, has agreed to acquire Valitor, an Icelandic payments solutions company, from Arion Banki (Arion Bank) for $100 million (approx £73 million).
Valitor provides both in-store and online payments acceptance solutions and card issuing to SMB merchants in Iceland, the UK and Ireland, and across Europe.
The UK company plans to streamline integration of omnichannel payments, expand into new markets, flatten FX fees, unlocking revenue and growth potential that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.
By leveraging Rapyd’s Collect, Disburse, Wallet, and Issuing capabilities, Valitor businesses and merchants can expand into a broad set of new use cases and services, quickly enter new markets.
Furthermore, Rapyd is actively pursuing acquisition opportunities, targeting strong payments companies following their $300 million (approx £218 million) financing round in January.
Founded in 2016 by Arik Shtilman, Arkady Karpman, and Omer Priel, Rapyd embeds fintech services into any application and simplifies the complexity of offering local payment methods.
Furthermore, the company is unifying fragmented payment systems worldwide by bringing together 900-plus payment methods in over 100 countries.
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Almost all sectors and services are undergoing digitisation and we’ve witnessed this trend accelerate since the COVID-19 pandemic. Insurance industry, too, pivoted quickly and now most of its services are offered online. London-based startup Bequest aims to further shake things up in this segment by offering simplified wills and life insurance for the millennial market. It has secured a £1.7 million seed funding and is also launching its new insurance offering that was being beta tested.
The latest funding round for Bequest was led by Kuvi Capital. Clocktower Ventures and Form Ventures participated as well, and all three investors will join the startups’ board as its platform scales up. Bequest will utilise these fresh funds to further develop its product offerings and generate traction for its services. It is also partnering up with Panda’s Foundation, but exact details of this are still under wraps.
James Buckley-Thorp, CEO and founder of Bequest, says, “Currently, 38 million families are unprotected and uninsured each year. We, at Bequest, want to make sure everyone is covered by making it relatable, accessible and something that does not cost an arm and a leg.”
Thorp adds that the life insurance industry is ‘out-of-date and overly complex’ and like most services, people require quick access to life insurance online with more knowledge and support. “We have seen that in the hugely positive response to date to our product. With this seed funding we can now supercharge our growth and become the all of life platform for the millennial generation,” Thorp says.
In a conversation with UKTN, Thorp reveals more about Bequest and what it aims to accomplish. The company was founded back in 2019 by James Buckey Thorp, after he realised how archaic the insurance industry was when he lost a friend in late 2017. Thorp says, “I realised how life insurance was slipping through the cracks for those with digital assets, and with the needs and desires of the millennial generation as a whole. This is when Bequest was born.”
The startup focusses its offering for the millennials and claims to be challenging the status quo. Typically, fulfilling insurance cover can take up to 6 weeks or even more, however Bequest says it can do the same in as little as 15 minutes. “People get instant cover, up to £500,000. Instant access, knowing that their family is supported no matter what happens,” Thorp adds.
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Currently, real-time data is only a fraction of the data consumed today. Reports suggest that it will account for 30% of global data by 2025. However, building homegrown real-time synchronisation capabilities is complex and costly and Ably eyes to simplify this.
London-based Ably is a platform that synchronised digital experiences in real-time. Now, the company just announced that it grabbed $70 million (nearly £50.6 million) in a Series B funding round co-led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital LLP. The funding round involved participation from existing investors including Triple Point, Digital Horizon, Forward Partners, and MMC.
The funds will be used to accelerate Ably’s growth and continued platform innovation to provide organisations with a comprehensive solution to offload the growing complexity of real-time data synchronisation at scale for distributed applications, devices, and hybrid cloud environments. Currently, Ably employs 65 people and plans to add a further 125 hires to strengthen its core UK team and grow a strong US presence over the next 15 months.
“When we launched Ably five years ago, we had a clear vision that real-time interactions would underpin rather than just augment our everyday digital experiences. Today, our most important daily and digital experiences happen in real-time. It’s business is critical now, and organizations realize they must keep up and transform to remain relevant,” said Matthew O’Riordan, CEO and Co-founder of Ably.
“Insight has an established track record of investing in industry disruptors and Ably is a natural fit for our portfolio,” said Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “Ably has demonstrated it is a visionary when it comes to solving the challenges of synchronizing digital experiences in realtime. The company is already the market leader and is primed for further growth in what we believe is an uncapped market.”
Norman Fiore, General Partner and Co-founder at Dawn Capital, commented, “We all live our lives in realtime. And now, we expect our digital lives to reflect this – whether tracking parcels, gaming with friends, querying inventory or updating business-critical infrastructure. As the infrastructure and platform powering these experiences, Ably is helping companies operate in realtime. I’m both hugely impressed by what Ably has achieved to date and excited to be supporting the team to innovate and scale further.”
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Thymia, a London-based mental health startup that empowers clinicians to assess depression faster and more accurately, has secured £780K in the seed round.
The investment round was co-led by Kodori AG and Calm/Storm. Others including, Form Ventures, Entrepreneur First, and several angel investors, participated.
The funding will go towards scaling up its platform to assess for and monitor depression.
Thymia uses video games based on Neuropsychology alongside analyses of video and speech to make mental health assessments smart, starting with depression.
The online platform allows clinicians to make faster and more accurate clinical decisions by making mental illness as objectively measurable as visible physical conditions.
Neuroscientist Dr. Emilia Molimpakis and theoretical physicist Dr. Stefano Goria co-founded Thymia after a close friend of Emilia’s developed depression. The traditional depression assessment methods failed to convey the severity of her distress leading to a suicide attempt.
This led Emilia to leverage her understanding of Linguistics, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Experimental Psychology to build a platform that could supplement and in time replace the highly subjective questionnaire-based approach clinicians use with patients experiencing mental health difficulties.
Emilia and Stefano have created video game-style activities and challenges for patients to interact with, such as verbally describing animated scenes or interacting with moving objects.
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UK has now become the third-largest e-commerce market globally, with numerous homegrown marketplace startups driving e-commerce trends for 2021 and beyond. One of them is OnBuy which claims to be the fastest-growing e-commerce marketplace globally and the fourth biggest in the UK according to the UK Marketplaces Rankings, with only Amazon, eBay and Etsy ahead of them.
Now UKTN has learnt that OnBuy is in the process of closing a £30 million funding round very soon. A significant source close to the deal informed that OnBuy in an advanced stage of completing a double-digit round (that could be around £30 million). Today, the startup has also started sending out invites to the journalists to announce the results of a significant fundraise.
OnBuy.com is one of the portfolio companies of London-based VC firm Fuel Ventures, and the UK-based e-commerce business last raised a £5 million Series A investment in 2020, which Fuel Ventures led.
Recently, Fuel Ventures, which is an early-stage UK venture capital investing in fast-growing digital tech businesses also unveiled£45M in funds for early-stage tech startups in the country. As per the company press release, the fund will be distributed in the next 12 months to over 60 early-stage digital startups. At the same time, Fuel Ventures also announced its commitment to extend support to pre-seed companies through this new fund.
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Revenue-based finance: Klarna and Liberis to provide flexible payment option to e-commerce companies
Numerous big fintech players are eyeing to better serve their business/merchant customers by offering new revenue-based financing services. This includes payments companies like Stripe and Worldpay. At this point in time, Sweden-based Klarna, the most highly valued startup in Europe has partnered with Liberis, the global embedded business finance platform to include revenue-based financing to its portfolio.
Through the new partnership, Klarna’s 250,000 merchants in 17 countries will have access to revenue-based financing from Liberis, through a direct integration into Klarna’s platform. They will be provided with a checkout and payment suite that enables their consumers to “buy now and pay later”. Notably, since its debut in 2007, Liberis has provided £500 million in financing to SMEs
Through Liberis, Klarna can also offer its merchant partners flexible financing solutions, pre-approved with fair and equitable payment terms that are based on their revenues and actual transactions.
The revenue-based funding options will be available immediately for global Klarna merchants in the coming months.
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As a result of the pandemic, people are returning to their home countries due to the many restrictions. This has opened the door to a new era of global employment in which employers recognise the need to offer remote-first jobs. However, thousands of organisations are currently breaching local employment laws without even realising it.
Dublin-based Boundless, a remote employment platform, helps companies compliantly employ talent globally while giving their employees access to benefits and opportunities in the country they work in. Now, this company has raised €2.5 million (nearly £2.1 million) in seed funding.
The investment round was co-led by London-headquartered Ada Ventures and FYRFLY to represent the significant shift to remote working, which is worth multi-trillion euros now.
Dee Coakley, Co-Founder and CEO of Boundless, commented: “From failing to register workers in the proper jurisdiction through to incorrectly hiring people as contractors to perform permanent roles, these worries are being felt across the entire leadership team – from the CFO and Head of Legal to the COO and Head of HR/People Ops. Employment laws, tax codes and statutory benefits all differ from country to country. Cultural norms around working also vary significantly. Overlooking or misunderstanding these norms only makes it more challenging to recruit and retain talent.”#
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Visa announced Thursday that it had signed an agreement to acquire Swedish open banking platform Tink for €1.8bn, a landmark acquisition for European tech and open banking.
If completed, this would be the third-largest acquisition of a European VC-backed fintech, according to Dealroom data.
The announcement comes after Visa scrapped its $5.3bn bid to absorb data sharing fintech firm Plaid earlier this year following concerns from US regulators. At the time, a source close to Tink said that the company and its investors were “punching the air” in celebration when they heard the deal had fallen apart.
“As we got to know Visa, it became clear that we share a common mission — to connect the financial world and accelerate the growth and adoption of digital financial services,” said Tink’s cofounders Daniel Kjellén and Fredrik Hedberg in a blog published Thursday.
Stockholm-based Tink started off as a consumer app in 2012, helping customers keep track of their personal finances, but later pivoted to providing banks and other fintech players with its aggregation software. It went on to become Europe’s largest open banking company, integrated with more than 3.4k banks and financial institutions and reaching millions of bank customers.
Post acquisition, Tink will keep its brand, management team and Stockholm headquarters.
Tink also held discussions about an acquisition with Mastercard in 2019.
“Visa is committed to doing all we can to foster innovation and empower consumers in support of Europe’s open banking goals,” said Al Kelly, CEO and Chairman of Visa.
“By bringing together Visa’s network of networks and Tink’s open banking capabilities we will deliver increased value to European consumers and businesses with tools to make their financial lives more simple, reliable and secure.”
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Tink is not the only Swedish fintech to be acquired by a global payments giant; PayPal bought iZettle for $2.2 billion in 2018.
Josh Bell, general partner at Dawn Capital, a Tink and iZettle investor said, “With Tink and iZettle, Sweden has now produced two of Europe’s largest-ever fintech M&A exits, reflecting the world-class innovation, commercial excellence and entrepreneurial talent we have found across the Nordic market. As the only investor in both companies, we are delighted to have supported their successful journeys to new homes within corporations with global reach, validating the relevance of the B2B tech coming out of Europe. We wish Tink continuing success in the next chapter of its journey.”
Goat Group, a Los Angeles, CA-based platform for products from the past, present and future, closed a $195m Series F funding, reaching a valuation of $3.7 billion.
The round was led by Park West Asset Management, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Franklin Templeton, Adage Capital Management and Ulysses Management.
The company intends to use the funds to further invest in growth in its sneaker business as well as its apparel and accessories verticals, and to increase its global footprint of 13 facilities with the addition of Chicago, China, Japan and Singapore.
Led by Eddy Lu, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Goat Group is a global sneaker marketplace, and has expanded to offer apparel and accessories from select emerging, contemporary and iconic brands. The company offers styles across various time periods on its digital platforms and in its retail locations, while delivering products to over 30 million members across 170 countries.
The platform has 30 million members and 600,000 sellers.
COCOON, the subscription rental service for luxury handbags, has announced the successful completion of a new round of investment, with new investors including global luxury group Kering.
The large number of existing backers in the business include Depop Founder, Simon Beckerman, and Lilly Wollman, a former partner at Generation Investment, bringing the total investment raised to over £2.5 million.
The announcement strengthens COCOON’s position in the UK’s circular fashion space and comes after a period of impressive growth for the company, which has seen a 200% increase in membership since April 2020.
The funding will allow a scaling of the COCOON platform through investment in a broader depth and selection of inventory, headcount, enhanced logistics and further tech development “to improve the member journey and create a frictionless experience for the community.”
COCOON will also deepen its relationships with leading brands to ensure members have access to the greatest selection of luxury bags, and the investment marks a major step in the company’s ambitions to be the first choice circular solution for bag lovers.
Ceanne Fernandes Wong, CEO and Co-Founder of COCOON, said: “From day one we have been selective and considered about our growth partners, so we are thrilled about the backing from such well-respected and informed investors. With Kering’s incredible history, proven track-record of innovation and deep luxury knowledge, it’s fantastic to have investment from such a powerful market leader. We are like-minded in our vision for a sustainable fashion future and our respect for the luxury codes.
“This funding marks a significant step for COCOON as we grow the collection and expand the business to own more of the circular fashion space. The market is calling out for innovative sustainable solutions and can see that our subscription-based model allows for consistent revenue generation through a challenging time. We look forward to developing the COCOON platform to offer our members a superior experience and unrivalled selection of luxury styles.”
Matt Heiman, Chair and Founder of COCOON, commented: “Our ambition for COCOON is vast, and we know this investment round will allow us to increase, improve and refine our offer for existing and new customers. Global investment into the circular economy has now reached over US$6.5 billion as investors back socially sustainable initiatives. They know that the option to do nothing has passed and they understand the opportunity the circular economy presents.”
Grégory Boutté, Kering’s Chief Client and Digital Officer, said: “We have an ambitious innovation strategy at Kering, which aims at identifying potentially disruptive trends and shaping the future of luxury fashion. As part of this strategy, Kering, through its ventures arm, takes minority stakes in services and technologies for the next generation of luxury consumers.
“This investment in COCOON will enable us to monitor new consumption habits and digital practices. We see the subscription model as a very interesting trend in fashion, and by extending the product lifecycle it resonates particularly well with Kering’s circularity ambition.”
Simon Beckerman, Founder of Depop, added: “We are seeing some impressive valuations for circular fashion businesses as investors recognise that sustainability is inextricably linked to the future of the sector. For me the COCOON model has huge market opportunity and revenue generating potential which means it will become one of the most important pillars of ethical luxury shopping.”