This past week saw a diverse range of deals closed, lending companies fared particularly well in the highest value deals.
The top spot for this week went to DBT, a Stockholm-based leading European SME lender, which raised SEK 3.1bn ($280m) from a debt facility from Varde Partners and NatWest.
The top three biggest deals came from companies offering credit or lending services. Besides DBT, the second biggest deal came from financial automation company Tally.
Tally offers automated credit card debt payment services. The company analyses customer financial profiles to determine the best and fastest way to pay down debt, and then offers eligible consumers a new line of credit at a lower interest rate to support faster repayment.
Zvlio was the third biggest deal. The company helps companies in the Balkans access capital by providing liquidity and savings and lending products to SMEs.
Although the biggest deal came from a Swedish company, US companies made up four of the top ten. Including Tally, a financial automation company which bagged $80m, cash management FinTech Jiko which raised $40m, CyberTech Eclypsium and WealthTech company Equi.
FinTech Global research recently found that the US accounted for 50% of the top ten FinTech deals that took place in Q3 this year.
Deal sizes have plunged in Q3 compared to previous quarters and only Klarna’s $800m deal made it into the top 10 deals during the first nine months. This is mainly due to major reductions in the public markets which have now been realised in the private sector, as investors revalue their current portfolios.
Investors are now unwilling to commit to huge deals over $1bn that we have seen in 2021 and early 2022. The InsurTech and PayTech sectors accounted for the most deals in the list above with three each and the US was the most dominant country with five representatives on the list of the top ten deals in Q3.
Here the major deals that took place this week.
Natwest and Varde Partners back SME lender DBT
DBT, a Stockholm-based leading European SME lender, has closed a SEK 3.1bn debt facility to accelerate its lending to Swedish SMEs from NatWest and Varde Partners.
DBT is on a mission to create better growth opportunities for Sweden’s small and medium-sized companies.
Since its inception in 2017, DBT said it has built a unique position within growth financing to SMEs, leveraging its credit intelligence technology platform, which by leveraging real-time client data enables tailored and scalable funding with faster turnaround to borrowers.
DBT’s proprietary technology platform for risk assessment and lending has allowed the company to lend more than SEK 2bn in the past six years. Data shows that DBT’s borrowers have outperformed other SMEs by 7x in terms of growth.
DBT said the funding will enable it to scale further and support more SMEs across all industries with simple access to growth funding.
Tally bags $80m
Tally, a financial automation company, has raised $80m in Series D funding led by Sway Ventures.
The round also saw participation from rom Menora Mivtachim. Previous investors Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Shasta Ventures and Cowboy Ventures also took part.
Alongside the funding, Tally announced that Ken Denman, a veteran customer-centric technology leader, has joined Tally’s board of directors.
Tally offers automated credit card debt payment services. The company analyses customer financial profiles to determine the best and fastest way to pay down debt, and then offers eligible consumers a new line of credit at a lower interest rate to support faster repayment.
To date, Tally has paid more than $1bn in credit card debt for its members, saving them millions of dollars in interest and late fees.
Tally said it will use the funding to continue to grow the business and further expand its automated debt pay-down system, with the mission of helping members get out of credit card debt, reducing the time and stress it takes people to reach their financial goals.
Fasanara backs Zvilo with $50m debt facility
Zvilo, a credit-led digital bank, has secured a debt facility of $50m from alternative asset management firm Fasanara Capital.
According to Fasanara, Zvilo, which is focused on the Balkans and emerging markets, will use this debt facility to rapidly scale and expand its provision of working capital for the over 800,000 SMEs situated in the Balkans.
Fasanara said this is vital, as 40% of SMEs in the Balkans sought loans to expand their operations even before the surge in energy costs.
However, high collateral requirements in the Balkans make financing inaccessible, particularly for SMEs.
Railsr rakes in $46m
Railsr, an embedded finance FinTech formerly known as Railsbank, has raised $46m in Series C funding.
The funding, which comes four months after the company rebranded to Railsr, is made up of $26m of equity and $20m of debt.
Anthos Capital, an existing shareholder, led the equity portion with Mars Capital, a new investor, providing the debt.
Railsbank is a global embedded finance experiences platform headquartered in London. The company has locations in the US, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Vietnam, Lithuania, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
The raise rounds off a very busy time for Railsr, including the appointment of the company’s first chairman, Rick Haythornthwaite. In August and in May, the company welcomed former England rugby international Will Carling to the fold as an advisor.
Railsr also promoted its chief product officer (CPO) Stuart Gregory to the position of chief operating officer (COO) and Jane Thorburn to the role of chief of staff, both are members of the Railsr ExCo.
Cash management FinTech Jiko bags $40m
Jiko, a cash management FinTech, has raised $40m in Series B funding to empower businesses of all sizes to store their cash in higher yielding spendable T-bills.
According to a report from Finovate, the company’s Series B round was led by Red River West. Trousdale Ventures, Owen Van Natta, Temaris & Associates, La Maison Partners, BPI France, Airbus Ventures, Anthem Ventures, Upfront Ventures, and Radicle Impact also participated.
The round adds to the $47.7m the company has raised to date via its Series A and seed funding rounds.
Jiko “spendable T-bills” provide transparent pricing and near instant liquidity, blending the safety and yield of T-bills with the flexibility of cash.
The Oakland, California-based FinTech leverages its status as a broker-dealer, as well as its technology stack and bank charter, to operate more cost-efficiently than other cash storage options.
Ali secures $25m
Ali, a FinTech that partners with companies to offer financial health solutions for employees, has raises $25m in Series A funding.
According to a report from LatAm List, the round was led by BTG Pactual.
Founded in 2018, Ali is on a mission to effectively reduce the indebtedness of Brazilians by offering them fair credit.
The FinTech personalises credit solutions and facilitates the bureaucratic process to help Brazilians achieve financial health.
For partner companies, Ali offers consigned credit for employees, focused on debt reduction, through the app Economizômetro.
This app performs an automatic survey of all credit lines taken by the user, as well as the costs of these lines, and makes the repayment and exchange of these credits for an operation with Ali.
The company has so far negotiated more than $37m in payroll-deductible loans and partnered with over 200 companies, including Deloitte and Ernst & Young. Ali’s loans have already impacted more than 250,000 employees.
Eclypsium nets $25m from Series B raise
Eclypsium, a firmware and hardware security firm, has raised $25m in a Series B funding round headed by Ten Eleven Ventures.
Also taking part in the round were Global Brain’s KDDI Open Innovation Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, J-Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Intel Capital, Mindset Ventures, Oregon Venture Fund, Translink Capital, AV8 Ventures, Alumni Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures.
Following this recent raise, the total amount of capital raised by Eclypsium since its founding has climbed to $50m.
According to Security Week, Eclypsium has developed a SaaS platform that can help enterprises secure and protect their endpoints, network equipment, severs and connected devices.
Eclypsium said it will use the new capital to expand its product capabilities, to further accelerate sales momentum, and continue its supply chain security research.
Korea Credit Data bags $24.7m to serve SMEs
Korea Credit Data (KCD), which provides business management services to self-employed and small business owners nationwide, has raised $24.7m in an extension of its Series D round.
FinTech company Fisverv and LG Uplus partipated in the extension round.
In total KCD has raised about $70m in its Series D round and about $112m since its 2016 inception, according to a report from TechCrunch.
The latest financing values the company at approximately $776m. KCD was valued at about $563m in November last year when it raised $28.1m in its Series D1.
KCD is on a mission to address small merchant’s pain points by providing them with digital financial services.
In 2017, the company launched a bookkeeping app for SME’s called Cash Note, which helps small and mid-sized enterprise owners track a comprehensive overview of cash flow, including revenues, credit card sales and expendtiture.
KCD claims that it has more than 1.7 million registered merchants in South Korea and its app has grown into a super app among small and mid-sized business owners.
Equi bags $15m
Equi, a New York-based alternative investment strategies platform, has raised $15m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Smash Capital with participation from Company Capital and Montage Ventures.
Equi is on a mission to make “elite investing” more accessible.
Over the past 20+ years, Equi said  investors and advisors have increasingly relied on a passive portfolio of stock and bond indexes to grow their wealth. However, with the end of the easy money era and the bull market of the past 12 years, the company said the traditional 60/40 stock/bond portfolio is dead.
Equi pointed to the trend, which it called a “dirty secret” of the wealth management industry, is that every ten to twenty years, there are decades lost in equity markets. This is where volatility covers up the fact that markets have moved sideways, not upwards, for a period. The most recent example of this is 2000-2012.
Equi believes the solution to this is adding a core, 50% allocation of non-correlated alternatives. This will reduce risk and increase returns, according to the company, especially in a more volatile and uncertain market.
However, Equi said “not all alternative investments are created equal.”
Most private wealth managers and banks are restricted to a very limited list of what they call alternatives but these lists are often filled with low-performing brand-name funds and those that can afford to pay to play. They’re also passively managed, meaning funds are purchased and left alone.
Typically, only the most highly resourced family offices and/or private hedge funds have been able to access a highly curated and actively managed portfolio of alternative investments. Equi wants to change this.
Equi aims to source top-tier managers and investment strategies from around the world that demonstrate low correlation to capital markets. Equi’s asset management team leverages data on more than 12,600 different funds to create portfolios that are designed to preserve and compound wealth in all markets. The portfolios are actively managed, ensuring that positions are hedged in the most pertinent market situations, such as those seen across this year.
Detectify lands $10m
Detectify, a domain and web application security company, has scored $10m in investment from a recent funding round.
The round, which was financially backed by Insight Partners, brings the total raised by the Swedish firm to $42m.
Established in 2013, the cloud-based external attack surface management solutions provider scans web applications for thousands of known vulnerabilities and monitors subdomains for malicious takeover.
The company has over 140 employees and claims to have over 1,900 customers, helping them to manage their external attack surface by keeping track of all internet-facing assets and their security status.
Detectify said it will use the new funding to help improve the accuracy of vulnerability assessments and accelerate adoption of its surface monitoring and application scanning platform.
In addition, Detectify plans to also add custom policies for surface monitoring.Israeli CyberTech LayerX bags $7.5m after stealth period.
LayerX secures $7.5m
LayerX has emerged from a period of stealth by launching its user-first browser security product and securing $7.5m in funding.
The round was led by Glilot Capital Partners and saw participation from Int3, Enel X, GuideStar, Kmehin Ventures and FinSec Innovation Lab by Mastercard.
LayerX claims its new solution aims to transform any browser into the most secure and manageable workspace with near-zero user impact.
LayerX said it employs an approach to browser security by operating in tandem with all commercially available browsers, enabling workforces to maintain their existing browsing preferences while granting security administrators the flexibility to transform any browser into a secure, customisable and intuitive workspace without compromising on user experience, privacy and performance.
Hummingbird Ventures backs neobank Vance in seed round
India-based global neo-banking platform Vance has raised $5.8m in a seed round led by Hummingbird Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Global Founders Capital, YCombinator, Soma Capital and seasoned angels such as Alan Rutledge and Gokul Rajaram.
â€Founded in 2022 by Parth Garg, a Stanford dropout, Vance said it is changing the way global citizens engage with financial services.
The company;s vision is to build an all-encompassing banking platform, which will allow users to seamlessly manage separate accounts, exchange currencies, and eventually, invest in equities across markets.
Unlike multi-currency wallets, Vance said its account allows users to transact using local rails in different countries. The goal is to enable users to use a direct debit in the US, while leveraging India’s UPI rails through the same account.
From the adoption of remote work to the desire to invest in equities across regions, the world is more interconnected than ever before. Yet, while the ambition and needs of consumers have crossed borders, Vance said the foundation of the banking industry remains region-specific and archaic.
Impak Ratings rakes in €4.5m from Series A
impak ratings, an analysis and rating agency for financial institutions, has pulled in €4.5m in a Series A funding round.
The round was headed by Altalurra Ventures and Societe Generale, which the latter being one of Europe’s first financial services groups actively supporting its clients in their environmental and energy transition with financing solutions.
Established in 2019, impak provides financial institutions with high-quality impact analysis based on the most consensual and rigorous industry standards, that bring transparency, data contextualisation and comparability.
By assessing how companies mitigate their negative impacts and how they generate positive ones, all through the lens of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, impak claims it goes beyond traditional ESG analysis and promotes a double materiality approach that consists in studying not only the ESG risks to a company’s business model, but also the impact of a company on its environment and society.
METAV.RS nets €3m
METAV.RS, a white label solution that facilitates the creation of NFTs and their sale via dedicated websites, e-shops or marketplaces, has raised €3m in seed funding.
The company is on a mission to become the leading metaverse platform for brands and agencies.
The seed round was led by Jsquare, a specialised Web3 fund based in Singapore, which was joined by consulting firm, Sia Partners – via its investment arm, Studio – and 50 Partners, an investment fund co-founded by 50 successful entrepreneurs.
The company has already signed strategic key accounts, from the luxury industry to retail. METAV.RS also works with creative agencies and consulting firms that aim to centralize and manage at scale the experiences of the brands they work with, including the launch of NFT collections and the creation of immersive experiences.
Irish PayTech NoFrixion snaps up €3.6m
NoFrixion, a business payments startup, has raised €3.6m in a funding round headed by Middlegame Ventures and Delta Partners.
According to Finextra, the funding comes soon after the company’s public launch of its MoneyMoov API, which bridges legacy and digital infrastructure to future-proof business payments.
The MoneyMoov API can allow developers to incorporate multiple payment options covering cards, open banking – including Sepa and FasterPayments – and Bitcoin Lightning in a single API.
The seed round comes just a year after the firm’s launch with the backing of Enterprise Ireland.
NoFrixion plans to use the capital to grow its engineering and sales teams.
FinTech Currensea bags £2.4m
Currensea, an open banking-powered FinTech, has secured £2.4m from a recent investment round.
The round was backed by Blankfinch Ventures and 1818 Venture Capital. Since its launch, the company has raised almost £11m.
Currensea is a money-saving travel card that removes the bank fees associated with foreign exchange by linking directly to users’ existing current accounts and has grown rapidly this year.
Cardholder numbers at the firm have more than doubled to 45,000, while a crowdfunding campaign in June successfully raised £2m via the Seedrs platform, beating the original target of £1m in just two hours.
Currensea enables users to cut out these charges while still being able to make overseas transactions directly and securely from their existing current account, without the hassle of opening a new bank account or worrying about keeping a prepaid card topped up.
The investment round will be used to fund additional hiring and drive Currensea’s ambitious plans to acquire 300,000 users by 2024.
PayTech Neutronpay lands $2.25m in seed financing
Neutronpay, a startup that allows consumers and businesses to send and receive payments on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, has bagged $2.25m in seed funding.
The round was headed by Hivemind Ventures and saw participation from Republic, Cavalry, Ride Wave, Studio, Fulgur Ventures and Iterative.
According to Finextra, Neutronpay is the first Lightning company with an initital focus on the 100 million population of Vietnam. Additional countries are set to follow throughout South East Asia.
The Lightning Network is a layer payment protocol which sits atop Bitcoin and facilities instantly settled payments measured in milliseconds and is capable of millions of transactions per second and allows for very low fees.
The funding has supported with additional headcount across various departments, with a focus on further development of enterprise APIs, soon to be rolled out mobile consumer app, sales and marketing and compliance.
French InsurTech Olino bags €2.2m to serve European SMEs
Olino, a French InsurTech startup formerly known as Riskee, has raised €2.2m to develop its embedded insurance product for European SMEs.
According to a report from TechEU, the seed round was led by Newfund, with participation from vertical investment firm Astorya.VC, MCapital and a trio of unnamed angel investors.
Founded in 2021, the Paris-based startup is building an embedded insurance service. The platform is 100% online and is designed to help companies save time and money.
Olino is already available in 15 digital insurance products today, enabling anyone servicing SME customers to integrate insurance offers at some point in the customer on-boarding journey.
The startup also has partnerships in place with the likes of Silvr, Axonaut, and a number of unnamed neobanks.
Finnish FinTech Enable Banking nets €600k
Enable Banking, a Finland-based financial infrastructure firm, has raised €600,000 from an investment round.
The round was led by Wellstreet’s FinTech Fund also saw participation from Dutch investment business Forward VC.
Enable Banking focuses on developing next-generation financial infrastructure via APIs for open banking capabilities across European banks and it is one the EU’s sole providers of non-intrusive connectivity to ASPSP-official APIs.
Enable claims it aims to empower its customers by making integrating with banks easier and more streamlined for companies, without storing data, using intrusive data modelling tactics or taking control of sensitive business data.
According to Enable, the funding guarantees the continued development of the company’s infrastructure, technology, and further international expansion into the EU which it has already started successfully pursuing.
Spend management platform Paytron bags $250k investment
Paytron, a full-suite workflow and spend management platform, has secured $250k in funding after it won the Xccelerate venture program.
The program was created by X15ventures, the company who provided the $250k investment. Xccelerate provides founders access to mentors and reports, helping them speed up the growth of their firm and understand the pathway to corporate partnership.
Paytron was founded to transform business spend, with integrated workflows to control every transaction. The company uses workflows to simplify the way accountants, enterprises and mid-market firms manage transactions.
Features of the platform include automated invoice capture, batch payments, and corporate cards with built-in expense management.
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