ING-backed Countingup lands £9.1m Series A with help of new investor Sage
Countingup, a UK-based banking and account app for small businesses, has landed £9.1 million in a Series A funding round.
The digital bookkeeper’s latest capital injection was led by Trulioo-backer Framework Venture Partners. It also attracted new backers Gresham House Ventures – which also backs FundingXchange – and software giant Sage.
“No entrepreneur ever says ‘Can’t wait to do my bookkeeping! Can’t wait to do my taxes!’”
The fresh funding will be fed into product innovation, team expansion, and more general growth vectors. The start-up currently offers a business current account with built-in accounting software to some 34,000 customers.
“This funding round is helping fuel our product roadmap, including the launch of our digital tax filing service,” says CEO and founder, Tim Fouracre – former CEO of ClearBooks.
HMRC is going digital
In April next year, Making Tax Digital regulations will come into full effect. They’ve come into gradual effect since 2019.
The new rules avoid firms manually entering their details via the HMRC portal, instead storing them through compatible software providers like CountingUp. The legislation acts as a “digital link” between all software used by the organisation for its VAT compliance.
Framework Venture Partners’ founding partner, Peter Misek, says Countingup is “the one fintech out of the hundreds” which “truly removes massive friction faced by entrepreneurs every day”.
“No entrepreneur ever says ‘Can’t wait to do my bookkeeping! Can’t wait to do my taxes!’ By using Countingup, all the drudgery of a small business vanishes.”
Growth since last year
Countingup’s last round was a £4 million “bridge round” led by ING Ventures in May 2020. Back then, the fintech said it had gathered 20,000 business customers. Which means in the last ten months, CountingUp has acquired 14,000 users.
The fintech aims to become the “one financial hub” for a million small businesses, helping with banking and automating accounting all through one app.
Countingup claims that users can sign up for an account in just five minutes. It also notes that its Accountant Hub – a web-based accounting system – can assist accountants to work more closely with their small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) clients.
Read next: Business banking app Countingup lands £4m led by ING
