London-based FinTech platform Butter has closed a £15.8m funding round to accelerate the rollout of its open-banking based buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) shopping app alongside developing its travel offering.
The round was led by BCI Finance, the credit arm of London based venture builder Blenheim Chalcot, as well as a number of other private Angel investors.
Butter’s platform provides users with a cost-effective way to book travel where payment could be done after the trip. While the firm began as a travel-based payment agency, it recently ventured into launching a BNPL shopping app offering instalments across every consumer vertical.
Boasting of offering its services across stores including Amazon, Argos, BooHoo, ASOS, H&M, Zara, Hugo Boss, Sports Direct, AirBnB, Currys PC World, Ao.com and Ikea, it has already garnered over 100,000 customers.
The firm leverages open banking data and machine learning to ensure responsible lending so that customers are only able to borrow amounts based on what they can afford.
Commenting on the funding round, Butter co-founder and CEO Timothy Davis said, “Our goal at Butter has always been to provide consumers with a simple and responsible alternative to credit cards and loans, enabling them to instantly spread the cost of anything from a takeaway to a holiday over a simple and transparent instalment plan, all within one easy-to-use account.
“We want to…empower consumers by allowing them to budget and spend intelligently and in a manner that suits their individual financial needs. The funding that we have secured via BCI will help facilitate the scale-up of our business as we continue to pioneer innovation in the buy now pay later space.”
BCI Investment manager Paul Maurici said, “Our mission at BCI is to be the funder of choice for UK FinTechs looking to scale.
“Butter is a young and ambitious company, which combines a tech-enabled approach to lending alongside impressive customer delivery capabilities. With its FCA authorisation already in place, the business is well placed to continue strong growth while assisting its customers in managing their money better.”
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