ICYMI funding round-up: Accelex, Pento, Fraudio, Curve & more

Written by Alex Hamilton
28th May 2021

With the ever fast-paced nature of the fintech world, it’s easy to let announcements slip by from time to time. Here at FinTech Futures, we put together an ‘In Case You Missed It’ (ICYMI) list of funding picks each week for your perusal.

The Accelex team

London-based Accelex, a data acquisition and reporting company, has announced the closure of a $5 million seed round.

Illuminate Financial and AlbionVC co-led the round, with participation from Expon Capital and SixThirty Ventures.

Accelex says its financing will accelerate the company’s global growth ambitions through further product development.

“Accelex is enabling investors, and their asset servicers, to digitise these processes, gaining access to better investment insights often bound up in PDF documents”, said Franck Vialaron, CEO

Danish start-up Pento has raised $15.6 million in a Series A funding round led by US VC firm General Catalyst.

Since 2017, the Danish firm has supported more than 700 companies in the transition away from what it calls “outdated payroll processes”.

Joining General Catalyst as angel investors are GoCardless co-founders Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson.

Existing backers Point Nine Capital, Moonfire Ventures, Hustle Fund and Seedcamp took part, with Avid ventures and LocalGlobe also investing.

UK-based card aggregator Curve has raised £9.9 million in a crowdfunding process lasting 54 hours.

Curve claims the round is the largest ever hosted on fundraising platform Crowdcube. The campaign was designed to enable Curve customers and retail investors to “follow in the footsteps of some of tech’s leading institutional investors”.

Curve will use the funds raised by crowdfunding and its recent Series C round to execute its “ambitious” growth strategy, focused on its international expansion and product innovation.

More than 4,000 retail investors took part in the first 60 minutes of the crowdfund. It raised £1 million in ten minutes, and £4 million in the first hour.

AI and machine learning start-up, Fraudio, has raised $3.3 million in a Seed round.

Investors in this round include the founders of FinTech companies Stone and SaltPay, VCs BiG Start Ventures and BYND Venture Capital, as well as the founders of Viva Wallet, ComplyAdvantage and VOLT.

Fraudio considers itself “the first in the next generation” of fraud detection players.

It leverages proprietary and patented AI technology with “a powerful network effect” from its “vast dataset” of transactions and real-time signals.

Current customers include Viva Wallet, Borgun, Novalnet, and PagueloFacil.

Park Place Payments, a female-founded fintech building new payment processing experiences, has raised $1.5 million Seed funding.

The round was led by Curate Capital. Additional investors included Katherine August-deWilde (former president and current vice chair, First Republic Bank), Anne Clarke Wolff (former global head of investment banking, Bank of America) and XFactor Ventures.

Park Place Payments says it has seen a 371% growth in its sales force, which is expected to reach 1,200 by the end of 2021.

It claims to have experienced a 92% increase in merchant clients and a 134% increase in monthly processing volume since March 2020.

Pensions fintech Penfold has raised £6 million in a round which included £3 million in crowdfunding.

Bridford Investments Limited, Alan Morgan (chairman, MMC Ventures) and Elkstone Capital invested in the fundraise.

Penfold is a digital alternative to traditional pension companies, allowing users to set up, manage and track their pensions easily online and via the app.

Contributions can be paused and topped up with instant one-off payments. Penfold claims to be the first pension provider to offer an open banking integration.