🧨 A busy end of 2021 for Speedinvest Fintech

We are extremely proud to announce that our portfolio company, Wayflyer, is our 5th unicorn! 🎉

Our portfolio is going through golden times and we can’t wait to tell you all more about the exciting developments that are just over the horizon. 

Last but not least, we are excited to announce the promotions of Tom to Partner and Enrique to Senior Associate.

🧨 Vitt is a revenue-based financing platform out of Berlin. The platform provides SaaS companies the option to raise growth capital based on their annual recurring revenue streams. By plugging directly into their clients’ systems, Vitt’s platform is able to deliver financing in less than 24 hours. The $15m pre-seed round was co-led by Better Tomorrow Ventures and Speedinvest.

💡 OZÉ is a Fintech-enabled marketplace based out of Accra and with operations in Ghana and Nigeria. OZÉ is a platform that equips SME owners in Africa to make data-driven decisions to improve their performance, tap into networks, and access capital. Speedinvest is leading the $3m Seed round alongside Africinvest. 

🔗 Fiat Republic is a London-based company bridging the gap between Web3 and banking as many crypto platforms need access to facilitate on/off ramps. The startup is building an e-money-regulated banking and payments API to drastically reduce the time and cost of processing fiat currencies for crypto platforms, both at the individual consumer and corporate treasury levels. Speedinvest led the $3.5m round joined by Seedcamp and Credo Ventures.

💸 Fairplay is our latest emerging markets endeavor. Operating in Mexico, Fairplay offers revenue-based financing to eCommerce businesses. Fairplay also offers free business analytics (marketing, inventory, logistics) platform for eCommerce businesses to improve their performance. The $15m round led by Dila Capital and Kayak Ventures was topped up with a $20m debt facility, led by Architect Capital. 

🛒 Wayflyer, our Irish revenue-based financing player closed a $150m Series led by DST, Prosus and QED, valuing the company at $1.6bn. Wayflyer will use the proceeds to further grow their team in the US, Europe and Australia. Read our blog post from our Seed investment back in 2020 here.

🧾 Lummo (formerly Bukukas), our Indonesian digital cashbook app helping mSMEs to build a strong and distinctive brand online, raised a $80m Series C led by Sequoia and Tiger Global. 

🌷 Tulipshare, the London-based activist investment platform that lets retail investors put their money where their mouth is, raised a $10m Seed round, led by Eurazeo.

🧲 Receeve, a no-code SaaS startup that makes it easier for companies to collect and recover debts, such as overdue claims, raised €4m in a Seed-extension round from ABN AMRO Ventures.

🏪 ShopUp, Bangladesh’s largest full-stack B2B commerce platform for small businesses, has closed a $34m Series B extension round led by Tiger Global.

📲 Lizza (formerly Finnu), joined the YC W22 cohort and pivoted from lending to become a (re)selling social commerce platform for LatAm. Why? Because a primary need of these local small businesses - who Lizza lent to for a year even before credit - is a way to scale their sales.

👛 Curve has partnered with Huawei to enable contactless payments on its phones.

🌊 Tide reported that their customer base represents 7% of the UK SME banking market.

🤝 Fairmoney hosted investors, the media and industry leaders at its first investor conference in Nigeria.

🏘️ EstateGuru has funded €500m in loans three years after reaching its €100m milestone.

🐼 A lot of things happening at Bitpanda. After allowing Lydia to offer crypto investments via its white-label platform, the company launched its first ETC tracking bitcoin on Deutsche Boerse. It comes as no surprise that they appear at the top of Sifted’s rapidly-growing startups.

🏡 Luko acquires Coya and gains insurance license in order to grow its European presence.

🦊 wefox has bought Assona, a special insurance broker.

🎢 2021 has been a record year for financial technology worldwide. The sector accounted for $1 of every $5 of global venture funding. CB Insights published a great piece of research around the topic.

📆 What is going to happen in crypto in 2022? Some of the brighest minds in the industry share some of the most exciting trends coming up.

💳 The payments sector continues to rise and shine in Europe as Checkout.com leads the way in its recent $1bn fundraise valuing the company at $40bn.

🎧 We enjoyed starting off the year listening to The State of Fintech Investing in 2022, brought to us by our friends at FT Partners.

🛒 Olga participated as a speaker on Sifted’s panel on what is next for BNPL.

🌟 CB Insights released its map of the world’s top 250 private Fintech companies of 2021. We are very proud to have 4 of our portfolio companies in there: Bitpanda, Luko, Tide, and wefox.

📚 Enrique shared the investment thesis behind our investment in OZÉ here.

💡 Markus and Carlota from our SaaS teams discuss the rise of the “API Economy,” where a lot of new Fintech plays are emerging, notably in the Payroll and Payments Operations segments.

🌟 Our portfolio of forward-thinking Fintech companies is always hiring exceptional talent! Browse open jobs here. 

We will be back with our next edition in April. In the meantime, we wish you a fantastic start to the New Year. Stay safe everyone!

Speedinvest Fintech team

From wefox to Bitpanda, Luko, Curve and Tide, the Speedinvest Fintech team has a portfolio spanning from Europe to emerging markets and partner with the most innovative tech startups driving this disruption. Whether reinventing payments or embedded finance, our sector expertise, strong industry networks, and in-house operational support help founders unleash their full potential.