Fintech funding round-up: 24 November 2016
Good ideas can bring good money
Let’s put the fun in funding by keeping it mercifully brief. A round-up of some key events.
Tel Aviv-based payments start-up PayKey has raised $6 million in Series A funding, co-led by e.ventures and Wharton Asset Management.
PayKey focuses on peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions on social networks and messaging apps (Twitter, Whatsapp, Fecebook Messenger etc) , and offers its technology to banks. The fintech’s B2B2C technology is platform agnostic and can be white-labelled.
New investors came onboard in this funding round, including CommerzVentures, Mastercard, Santander InnoVentures, and Digital Leaders Ventures.
Another mobile P2P start-up, Flender, launched its crowdfunding campaign on 21 November 2016, aiming to raise £500,000 in exchange for 10% equity in the firm.
UK-based Flender enables consumers to borrow money via social network contacts. “The revolutionary platform has been in development for two years,” the start-up states. By today (November 24), it has raised 71% of its target – £357,390.
The company says it is valued (pre-money) at £4,498,613.
Italian fintech start-up Euklid has completed its first round of seed funding with a valuation of €10 million for a stake of 3-4% in the company.
Euklid was set up last year. It focuses on applying the artificial intelligence (AI) tech to Bitcoin and blockchain. It says it “achieved a return of over 130% on its investments on crypto-assets all thanks to the algo-trading systems driven by AI”.
The company is going to move its HQ to London’s Level39, to pursue its international expansion agenda. Antonio Simeone, co-founder and CEO of Euklid, says the UK capital “offers the ideal ecosystem”. He explains: “Here we can meet the needs of new investors and rely on an innovative and efficient financial industry also thanks to a lighter regulatory environment.”
