ICYMI fintech funding round-up: Sandbox Wealth, ThreatFabric, Centrapay, and more
At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) funding round-up so you can get the latest funding news.
HUB2 lands €8 million
African fintech start-up HUB2 has raised €8 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm TLcom Capital.
The round also saw additional participation from Bpifrance, Enza Capital, FMO, Eric Barbier (the founder of Thunes), and others.
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Côte d’Ivoire, HUB2 aims to streamline payments for fintechs in Francophone African countries by offering a single API that supports bank transfers and card payments.
HUB2 currently operates in six Francophone African countries—Senegal, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Côte d’Ivoire—and plans to expand into more countries in the region over the next two years.
Swiss fintech Schuman Financial has bagged €7 million in a seed funding round led by Czech VC RockawayX.
The round also saw participation from Bankless Ventures, Delta Blockchain Fund, Gnosis VC, Lightspeed Faction, Kraken Ventures, Nexo Ventures, and a consortium of angel investors.
Founded this year, the start-up states it is “developing technologies, infrastructure, and products necessary to bring European financial services on-chain”.
The company has launched its first core product, EURØP, which it says is “a euro-denominated stablecoin issued by our fully owned, French-regulated company with an Electronic Money Token (EMT) licence that allows us to issue MiCA-compliant stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies”.
Schuman Financial says use cases for the offering range “from digital payments and on-chain FX trading to tokenised real-world assets”.
EURØP will debut on Ethereum and Polygon, with plans to expand to “additional chains and DeFi protocols in the upcoming months”, the company says.
Sandbox Wealth lands $1.25 million
Sandbox Wealth, a US-based start-up, has secured a $1.25 million pre-seed funding round spearheaded by NextGen Venture Partners.
Founded last year, Sandbox operates as an open architecture platform offering cash management and credit solutions for investors.
The new capital comes as the company prepares to launch its banking and lending platform, which will leverage AI-powered natural language processing to extract insights from financial documents.
This funding round, with additional backing from Gener8tor, RevTech Labs, and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, will be used to recruit more engineering talent and accelerate research and development.
Rabo Investments, the investment arm of Rabobank, has invested an undisclosed sum in Amsterdam-based cyber fraud prevention firm ThreatFabric.
Founded in 2015, ThreatFabric offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that combines advanced device fingerprinting, behavioural analytics, and over 10,000 adaptive fraud indicators to help banks and financial institutions identify fraudulent activity across mobile and online platforms.
The cash injection is intended to help ThreatFabric to “accelerate its international growth and further its mission to create a more resilient and secure banking system”.
Rabo Investments joins ABN Amro Ventures and Motive Ventures in backing the Dutch firm, following their leadership in ThreatFabric’s €11.5 million seed round last year.
Centrapay bags undisclosed investment
Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) has invested an undisclosed sum in Centrapay, an Auckland-based payments technology company.
Founded in 2020, Centrapay is a digital payments company offering a range of payment APIs to connect merchant systems with consumer apps.
According to a BNZ statement, the investment is aimed at enhancing the “digital payments capabilities across both organisations”.
The funding further extends the collaboration between the two companies, which recently resulted in the development of a new digital wallet and point-of-sale (POS) app called Payap.
The app will debut next March with core features for payments, acceptance, and rewards, while additional functionalities, such as P2P payments, will be “rolled out progressively throughout 2025”.
