BlackFin Tech Weekly — September 30th, 2024
Every Monday, we publish a short digest which sums up last week’s Fintech activity.
Hello FinTech Friends,
Welcome back to our newsletter! It’s been an exciting week in the fintech world, and we’re eager to share the most recent deals and updates from the past seven days. Let’s jump into the key highlights!
Last week, we saw 14 official fintech deals in Europe, raising a total of €216.3 million, with 4 deals in the UK, 2 deals in Germany, 2 deals in France, 1 deal in Italy, 1 deal in Spain, 1 deal in Liechtenstein, 1 deal in Estonia, 1 deal in Poland and 1 deal in Austria.
Congratulations to Celestia Labs, the Liechtenstein-based crypto infrastructure company, for securing €93.1 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto. A round of applause also goes to Apron, the UK-based payments platform, for raising €27.9 million in a Series B round led by Zinal Growth. Lastly, kudos to the Spanish InsurTech startup Tuio, which raised €15 million in a combined debt and equity round led by MassMutual Ventures.
Let’s dive in
Celestia Labs, a modular data availability network enabling secure blockchain launches, has raised €93.1 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Syncracy Capital, 1kx, Robot Ventures, and Placeholder. The funds will be used to expand Celestia’s modular blockchain, designed to overcome the scalability issues of traditional Layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum. By separating consensus, execution, and data availability into distinct layers, Celestia offers unprecedented flexibility and scalability for decentralized applications. With a goal of increasing block throughput to one gigabyte per second—surpassing Visa’s transaction capacity—Celestia aims to reshape blockchain scalability for DeFi, NFTs, and more.
Read more
Apron, the UK-based business payments platform, has secured €27.9 million in Series B funding led by Zinal Growth, with backing from Index Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Tony Fadell. Apron streamlines payment processes for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), enabling them to manage, pay, and reconcile invoices effortlessly while integrating with tools like Xero and QuickBooks. This new capital will fuel the expansion of Apron's engineering team and support the launch of new products, including an expense management solution tailored for SMBs. Since its €14 million Series A in 2023, Apron has grown its customer base by over 20x, processing millions in payments daily.
Madrid-based InsurTech startup Tuio has secured €15 million in a funding round combining equity and debt to enhance its services and fuel further growth. The round was led by MassMutual Ventures, with participation from BlackRock, BAMCAP Ventures, Extension Fund, and others. Founded in 2021, Tuio specializes in digital home, life, and pet insurance and has grown its customer base to over 45,000. The company plans to use the funds to boost structural investments and capitalize on its path to profitability, with a focus on innovation and improving customer experience.
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, here is the European M&A activity of the week:
Summa Equity, a Stockholm-based private equity firm focused on solving global challenges, has acquired NetGuardians, a Swiss pioneer in AI-driven fraud prevention and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions. NetGuardians, known for its innovative 3D AI technology that combines supervised, unsupervised, and active learning, helps protect over 100 customers in 30 countries by analyzing user behavior and detecting unusual transactions in real-time. The acquisition opens collaboration opportunities with Intix, another Summa portfolio company specializing in Know Your Transaction (KYT) data management, to create advanced financial crime prevention solutions and drive progress toward combating illicit financial flows, supporting UN Sustainable Development Goals #8, #10, and #16.
And finally, here are the news that caught our eye last week:
Klarna has entered into a partnership with New-Zealand based Xero, an accounting software for small businesses with millions of customers. Through this partnership, Klarna is bringing a buy now, pay later option to small businesses.
In August, Revolut employees sold shares worth $500m, ca. $200 of which were sold by their CEO. Next to investment firms D1 Capital Partners, Tiger Global and Coatue, it has now been reported that the UAE sovereign fund Mubadala acquired a stake in the company in this sale.
The US Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit against Visa for the alleged monopolization of debit network markets. In the US, 60% of debit transaction are reportedly conducted by Visa for a total charge of over $7bn per year in fees. The Department of Justice alleges that Visa has used its dominance in the market to influence merchants and banks into exclusively using their services.
The European Investment Bank has granted €220m in financing to the Italian PayTech Nexi, which operates all across Europe. The explicit goals of of lending this money is to support the innovation in the digital payments sector. The funds will be used for projects that modernize digital payments in Europe in alignment with Nexi Groups’ ESG objectives.
Have a great week!
Sources of the fundraising reports