The FinTech venture capital fund of European bank Santander has joined Barclays to lead a Series B funding round for invoice finance platform MarketInvoice.
The £26m round also featured significant participation from European VC fund Northzone, an existing backer of the business.
Technology credit fund Viola Credit, who also participated in the equity round, will provide a debt facility of up to £30m to help scale the MarketInvoice business loans solution, which sits alongside its core invoice finance offering.
MarketInvoice has funded invoices and business loans to UK companies worth more than £2bn since 2011, making it Europe’s largest online invoice finance platform.
Ian Rand, CEO of Barclays Business Bank, said: “Collaborating with fintech companies like MarketInvoice is an integral part of Barclays’ strategy for accelerating growth.
“This investment demonstrates our commitment to the partnership we announced last summer which offers hundreds of thousands of our SME clients access to even more innovative forms of finance, boosting cash flow and competition in the market.”
Santander InnoVentures head of investments Manuel Silva Martinez added, “MarketInvoice is helping UK businesses access much needed funding to keep their businesses and ideas thriving in a very competitive market.
“We are pleased to be joining other financial institutions as shareholders to scale their solutions in the UK and abroad.”
Santander InnoVentures is Santander’s $200m fintech venture fund, tasked with finding and qualifying prospective fintech businesses to help either transform the bank or serve customers better.
Since launching in 2014, the fund has invested in 22 portfolio companies, and 70 per cent of the fund’s portfolio companies are now in strategic engagements with Santander Group.
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