German business digital bank Penta has collected €18.5m in the first close of a new funding round.
RTP Global, ABN AMRO Ventures and VR-Ventures joined the round, making their first investments into Penta. Previous Penta backers finleap and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, also contributed to the capital injection.
HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and RTP Global served as the co-leaders of the round. As part of the deal, HV partner Barbod Namini and finleap CFO Michael Hock will join the Penta board of directors.
With the new capital, the company will look to increase the development of its digital platform, this will include focusing on improving its technology, product, customer service and marketing. The digital bank is also exploring the prospect of expanding into other European markets.
Penta CEO and co-founder Marko Wenthin said, “We are very delighted to see a strong commitment from such renowned and strategic partners for our vision: reshaping business banking for small and medium enterprises. SMEs are the engne of countries’ economies.
“With our approach of building a platform, by focusing on their business needs and offering them a veritable one-stop-shop of services, we go way beyond banking. By growing the round of investors, Penta also will profit from a wider network across Europe, future co-operations and a significant acceleration of growth.”
The digital bank formed a partnership with card reader developer SumUp late last year. The deal enables Penta to support offline small and medium businesses through point-of-sale terminals.
Penta provides small businesses with a German IBAN and current account, debit Mastercard, real-time spending overview and custom categories for transactions. A customer can get Mastercards for their employees, set specific spending limits and add receipts with one click.
Last September, the bank revealed it had reached the 10,000 business customer milestone.
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