Fintech funding round-up: 21 June 2017
Some people have got deep pockets, because the funding fun never ends. Our latest round-up features Soldo, Atom Bank, British Business Bank, BlackRock and Scalable Capital.
Multi-user spending account, Soldo, has reported a Series A funding round of $11 million, led by Accel and includes participation from Connect Ventures, InReach Ventures, U-Start and R204 Partners. Based on the Mastercard payment network and a proprietary software platform, Soldo says it enables a business to delegate, control and track company and employee expenses in real-time. It also provides a digital wallet and customisable prepaid cards.
The investment will be used to develop its proprietary technology and support growth, as the company says it expands in its current markets of the UK and Italy and plans unspecified launches in Europe.
UK challenger bank Atom is getting a £30 million funding sum from state-owned British Business Bank (BBB). As reported last year, UK Chancellor Philip Hammond announced a plan to invest £400 million of venture capital funds into BBB, a government vehicle to lend money to British businesses. The idea is to support the home-grown business sector – including fintech firms – and to prevent them from being snapped up by international companies.
With the money, Atom in turn will be able to lend more money to SMEs. Anthony Thomson, Atom’s founder and chairman, says: “Access to Tier 2 capital at such an early stage of the growth cycle is rare.” This desire for cash by Atom is not a surprise. As reported in March, the bank said it planned to raise almost £113 million in equity investment to support its ambitions for growth. Earlier this month, the bank announced it was delaying its current account launch until at least 2018. CEO Mark Mullen said forthcoming regulations made the UK consumer banking market too “ambiguous and uncertain”.
Digital investment manager Scalable Capital has signed a €30 million funding round, led by asset management firm Blackrock alongside existing investors HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and Tengelmann Ventures. It brings Scalable Capital’s total funding to €41 million.
BlackRock has taken a “significant” but undisclosed minority equity to “help them grow their business with financial institutions and corporates”. Patrick Olson, BlackRock’s chief operating officer of EMEA, will join Scalable Capital’s supervisory board. Scalable Capital is based in Munich and London. Since its launch 16 months ago, it says it has gathered over €250 million of assets from over 6,000 retail clients.
