Norwegian FinTech startup Tillit is apparently about to raise €2.5m in a new funding round just as the buy now pay later industry is heating up.
Several sources speaking with TechCrunch reveals that the Oslo-based venture is apparently on the cusp of raising a new capital raise led by Sequoia and backed by seed investors LocalGlobe and Visionaries.
Although, calling Tillit a BNPL startup would be missing the point as it is more geared towards the B2B space.
“With our instant and flexible invoice financing and smart expense management, we make purchasing a more enjoyable experience for both merchants and their business customers,” the company described itself in a statement.
Tillit offers invoice financing at the checkout stage, which includes giving buyers a number of payment options, and expense management services.
All of these options essentially boils down to sellers getting better conversions through instant credit offers and that buyers can defer or spread out the payment costs.
Tillit is part of the emerging Nordic FinTech scene that has gone from strength to strength over the past decade.
While the growth has been predominantly driven by Swedish ventures like BNPL giant Klarna, the entire region’s FinTech industry has skyrocketed over the years.
In 2016, Nordic FinTech companies attracted $253.2m in funding in total, according to FinTech Global’s research. By 2020, that figure had skyrocketed to $1.58bn, despite the coronavirus crisis making some investors hesitant to invest.
Looking at the BNPL space in general, it seems as this segment of the FinTech industry is heating up. A key sign of this is not just that Affirm went public at the start of the year but also that several companies in the sector – such as Tamara, Uplift, Zilch, Split and Tabby – have raised funds in recent months.
Although, none of those funds were as big as the behemoth $650m funding round raised by Klarna in September that saw it achieve a $10.65bn valuation and made it briefly hold down the title of being Europe’s most valuable privately owned FinTech company.
Checkout.com claimed the crown in January after raising a $450m Series C round at a $15bn valuation.
Klarna and its Australian rival Afterpay have also recently been engaged in war of words that is essentially about whether or not they were making merchants pay too much for the privilege of using their services and which company had the biggest market share.
At the same time, the sector is about to face some stricter regulations. In Sweden, Klarna’s CEO has been arguing with the nation’s government about whether BNPL services may put people at risk of ending up in financial trouble by enlisting credit services that they cannot afford. Similar arguments have been raised elsewhere as well.
In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority has also called for stricter regulations for the BNPL space following the close of the Woolard Review.
“New ways of borrowing and the impact of the pandemic are changing the market, with billions of pounds now in unregulated transactions and millions of consumers at greater risk of financial difficulty,” said Christopher Woolard, chair of the review.
“Changes are urgently needed to bring BNPL into regulation to protect consumers, to ensure that there is secure provision of debt advice to help all those who may need it, and to maintain a sustained regulatory response to the pandemic.”
That comes at the same time as the the BNPL industry is getting crowded. For instance, PayPal has recently launched an instalments solution in the US and in the UK, BNPL companies Zilch, Split and Tabby recently raised funding rounds, and Curve has teamed up with Thought Machine to power its instalments startup Curve Credit.
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