The Belgian FinTech sector is gaining impressive traction, with investment growing over 12 times in the last three years. Belgian FinTech startups have attracted $88.6m across 32 deals since 2014. Last year a record $65.4m was allocated to the sector.
The Top 5 Deals Raised over $55m
The biggest three deals in that period were all closed in 2016 raising over $40m. For instance, TopCompare.be fetched €20m from Nova Founders Capital, Peter Thiel, SBI Holdings and others. The second biggest deal raised half as much with IbanFirst, a financial services platform for SMEs, collecting €10m from Xavier Neil (Founder at Kima Ventures) and other investors. The top three was rounded off by UnifiedPost, an enterprise software provider, raising €10m from SmartFin Capital and existing investors.
Infrastructure & Enterprise Software leads the way in both capital invested and number of deals
The sub-sectors in FinTech that closed the most deals in 2016 were Infrastructure & Enterprise Software and Payments & Remittances with 13 and 7 transactions, respectively. Over three years, however, Infrastructure & Enterprise Software and WealthTech attracted over 80% of the total amount invested in the country. The growth in number of investments was led by three investors – SmartFin Capital, Pamica NV and AAA Find – which participated in 31.3% of deals during that period.
