BlackFin Tech Weekly — October 21st, 2024
Every Monday, we publish a short digest which sums up last week’s Fintech activity.
Hello FinTech Friends,
Welcome back to our newsletter! We have some exciting updates and insights from the fintech world to share with you. Let’s dive straight into the latest news and trends!
Last week, we saw 11 official fintech deals in Europe, raising a total of €105.1 million, with 5 deals in the UK, 3 deals in France, 2 deals in the Netherlands, and 1 deal in Italy.
Congratulations to Stoik, the French cyber insurance company, for successfully closing a successful €25 million Series B round, led by Alven. Let’s also celebrate Tebi, the Dutch financial operating system for retail and hospitality, for raising €20 million in Series A funding, led by Index Ventures. And lastly, a special congratulations to our portfolio company Pretto, which raised €14 million in a series B round from historical investors Serena, Eurazeo, Orange Ventures, Kernel, Alven and Blackfin.
Let’s dive in
French cybersecurity insurance startup Stoïk has raised €25 million in a Series B round led by Alven, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Munich Re Ventures, and others. Focused on small and medium-sized businesses in Europe, Stoïk helps companies transfer cyber risk by offering tailored insurance products. With a presence in France, Germany, and Austria, Stoïk covers businesses with up to €750 million in annual turnover, offering protection against cybersecurity incidents like ransomware attacks and revenue loss. The funds will be used to scale operations, expand into new markets, and grow their policyholder base to 5,000 by the end of 2024.
Amsterdam-based startup Tebi, an all-in-one financial operating system for retail and hospitality businesses, has raised €20 million in a Series A funding round led by Index Ventures. With this investment, Tebi aims to accelerate product development and expand its reach globally. Founded in 2021 by a team including Adyen co-founder Arnout Schuijff, Tebi provides a comprehensive solution that integrates payments, inventory management, reservations, and bookkeeping. The platform, which already processes over €100 million annually, offers a unique pricing model tied to users' revenue. The new funds will support team growth and expansion beyond the Netherlands.
Our portfolio company Pretto, the French digital mortgage brokerage platform, has successfully raised €14 million in a new funding round, backed by historical investors Serena, Eurazeo, Orange Ventures, Kernel, Alven and Blackfin’s ongoing support. This follows a previous €30 million raise in early 2022. Leveraging its continuously updated algorithm, Pretto helps users compare mortgage rates from major French banks and find tailored offers. Despite the recent challenges in the real estate market, Pretto has doubled its market share and revenue since 2022. With the new funding, Pretto aims to solidify its position in the top five brokers and expand its B2B platform, Pretto Galaxie. The company also plans to enhance its AI-powered solutions to improve customer relations and support its team of 180 employees, who manage €1 billion in annual mortgage loans.
This week there have been no major new announcements in terms of M&A activity. We will hopefully be back with news on that space next week.
And finally, these are the news that caught our eye last week:
As reported last week, Monzo has announced an employee share sale, limited to current equity-holding staff. A group of 58 former employees has now signed a letter asking to be included in the sale; many of these were reportedly among Monzo’s first employees and cite their pivotal involvement in the initial build-up of the company as their central argument.
The cooperative Swift is launching an AI-powered anomaly detection service to enhance fraud defense in cross-border payments. The service will be available starting January 2025 and build on Swift’s existing Payment Controls Service, drawing pseudonymized data from billions of transactions within Swift’s network. A successful pilot was previously concluded with financial institutions across Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East taking part.
Looking to diversify their offering, Worldline is moving into the account-to-account (A2A) payment market. After a nine-month pilot phase, “Bank Transfer by Worldline” is now integrated into ~500 Worldline merchants’ online and invoice payment services.
According to a Bloomberg report from last week, Stripe is in advanced talks to acquire the Stablecoin-focused Fintech platform Bridge. While TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington confirmed the deal had closed at $1.1bn on X last night, sources at Stripe refuted the statement. After initially supporting Bitcoin starting 2014, Stripe had withdrawn from the Crypto markets for six years. In April 2024, Stripe first allowed merchants to accept stablecoins for online payments.
Have a great week!
Sources of the fundraising reports