Alumni News

Marqeta Partners with Amount to Help Banks Enter the BNPL Space

Marqeta Partners with Amount to Help Banks Enter the BNPL Space
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqueta

Payment processor Marqeta teamed up with buy now, pay later (BNPL) company Amount this week. The two are working together to help banks compete in the BNPL arena. The partnership will integrate Amount’s BNPL solution and Marqeta’s instant virtual card issuance tools to help banks launch their own BNPL offering and virtual card.

“With escalating consumer expectations for simple, digital experiences at every step, banks must compete or continue to lose market share to digital challengers who offer a more flexible way for their customers to pay,” said Amount CEO Adam Hughes. “We continue to develop and expand our platform to give banks the agility and tools they need to create high-value interactions at the point of sale. As a leader in modern payments and innovation, Marqeta shares our vision and is the ideal partner to bring best-in-class solutions to banks.”

Banks have traditionally been left out of BNPL spending, since they lack the tools to provide such offerings to their customers. However, Amount takes a modular approach to BNPL that integrates with legacy platforms. The configurable nature of Amount’s tools gives banks flexibility to provide customers split pay or installment payments across multiple channels and payment vehicles.

“This partnership creates a pathway for banks to become more agile and meet customer demand for more flexible ways to pay, including BNPL,” said Marqeta Chief Revenue Officer Darren Mowry.

The new offering comes at a good time; consumer interest in BNPL has been steadily increasing in the past two years. And according to Juniper Research, money spent using BNPL tools is expected to nearly quadruple between 2021 and 2026, amounting to a 274% increase.

Amount was founded in 2019 and has since raised $243 million. The company’s BNPL technology aims to help traditional FIs compete with the rising wave of challenger banks by helping banks go digital in a matter of months. Amount’s white-labeled products help banks with omnichannel digital account opening, fraud prevention, identity verification, loans, deposits, and credit cards. The Chicago-based company is planning to add home equity, auto, and small business loans to its retail banking suite.

Marqeta is a modern card issuing platform that offers banks and fintechs the tools to create customized payment card programs. The company was founded in 2010 and went public earlier this year in an IPO that raised $1.2 billion on the NASDAQ exchange. Marqeta trades under the ticker MQ and has a market capitalization of $16.8 billion.

Photo by Universal Eye on Unsplash

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Envestnet Makes Strategic Investment in YieldX

Envestnet Makes Strategic Investment in YieldX
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Envestnet, Funding

Investment solutions provider Envestnet announced it has made a strategic investment in fixed income investing platform YieldX this week. Illinois-based Envestnet was the lead investor in YieldX’s most recent, Series A funding round.

The round, which totaled $18 million, brings YieldX’s total funding to $36 million. YieldX will use the money to scale its quant, engineering, and analytics teams and to expand its API suite. Specifically, YieldX aims to further personalize its offerings, add new data and integrations, expand existing ESG customization, and execute its go-to-market strategy.

Through the newly formed partnership, Envestnet will distribute YieldX’s products to its nearly 108,000 advisors and 6,000+ enterprise customers. The tie-up will help Envestnet clients offer their end consumers better fixed-income investment outcomes.

“We are fully vested in enhancing our ecosystem to intelligently connect financial lives, and we believe income and protection solutions are critical to helping make financial wellness a reality,” said Envestnet Chief Strategy Officer Rich Aneser. “Through our strategic partnership with YieldX, and investing to expand its capabilities, we are able to bring more income related solutions to market for helping advisors meet a critical client need.”

Founded in 2019, YieldX offers tools for fintechs, wealth managers, broker dealers, and asset managers. Company Cofounder and CEO Adam Green called the partnership a “powerful way to level the fixed income playing field for Envestnet’s broad network of advisors and end investors with solutions that simplify the traditional complexities of sourcing and trading fixed income assets.”

Envestnet was founded in 1999 and has since made 13 acquisitions, including its most notorious buy, Yodlee, in 2015. The company’s purchase of data aggregation firm Yodlee broadened its offerings from advisor technology and launched it into the world of open finance. Envestnet is a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ENV and has a market capitalization of $4.66 billion.

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

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Klarna Adds Online Trip Planning with Inspirock Acquisition

Klarna Adds Online Trip Planning with Inspirock Acquisition
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna, Mergers & Acquisitions

Does COVID have you dreaming up your long-awaited vacation? Consumer payment services firm Klarna’s latest acquisition may be of help.

The Sweden-based company snapped up Inspirock, an online trip planning service, for an undisclosed amount. Klarna CEO and Co-Founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski described the addition of travel planning “a natural extension of the benefits Klarna brings to payments and shopping.”

Founded in 2012, Inspirock leverages AI to help its customers explore a destination’s offerings and create personalized itineraries utilizing local expertise. On an annual basis, the California-based company sees 25+ million customers each year.

The integration will allow Klarna’s 90 million customers to use the Klarna app to pay for a trip in installments. In addition to the payment aspect, Klarna will also help users plan for their trip. Inspirock matches travelers’ preferences with over 230 million data points to optimize their travel itinerary and discover hidden gems.

“For customers, this makes the whole journey from inspiration to planning and preparing for a trip simpler, less stressful, and more fun, while enabling our retail partners to better reach and engage with their audiences by offering more personalized content,” said Siemiatkowski.

Combining travel planning with its existing payment capabilities inches Klarna towards becoming more like a super app. Founded in 2005 and with $3.7 billion in funding, Klarna offers buy now, pay later options to help users avoid credit cards while enjoying payment flexibility. Klarna also offers a shopping app to provide users with a holistic shopping experience– from payments to shipment tracking– and a rewards club it describes as the “vibeyest community in shopping.”

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

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Currencycloud Taps Plaid to Streamline Account Funding

Currencycloud Taps Plaid to Streamline Account Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Currency Cloud, Daily news, Plaid

Global payments platform Currencycloud has teamed up with open finance network Plaid this week. Through the collaboration, the two will offer a joint solution to make it easy for U.K. banks and fintechs to operate in multiple currencies.

The overall objective of the partnership is to reduce friction for Currencycloud customers. Currencycloud will embed Plaid’s Payment Initiation Services (PIS) into its app, allowing customers to pull money directly into their account from any bank without ever leaving the app.

The rollout will begin with customers using the Currencycloud Direct white-label solution, and will later roll out to the entire Currencycloud platform.

“The internet has made business more borderless than ever before, but it is incredibly difficult to move money across countries. Accepting, settling, and converting payments is complicated, expensive, and can take time,” said Plaid Head of European Partnerships Farid Sedjelmaci. “Combining Plaid’s Payment Initiation Services with Currencycloud’s all-inclusive platform for foreign exchange provides a smooth payment experience that obscures all of the complications with online global money movement.”

Prior to the partnership, the only way customers using Currencycloud Direct could top up their account was to leave the app, log into their bank app, and submit the payment. Embedding Plaid’s PIS reduces this friction, streamlining the account funding process.

Currencycloud was founded in 2012 and has since processed more than $100 billion to over 180 countries. The U.K.-based company works with FIs and fintechs including Visa, Dwolla, and Mambu to help them provide cross-border infrastructure solutions to their clients.

Plaid helps 11,000+ FIs offer their customers access to third party financial services via a suite of APIs to connect consumers, financial institutions, and developers. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

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Zopa Raises $304 Million Ahead of IPO

Zopa Raises $304 Million Ahead of IPO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Funding, Zopa

Peer-to-peer lending platform and digital bank Zopa landed $304 million (£220 million) this week. The investment marks Zopa’s largest round to-date, and brings the U.K.-based company’s total funding to $792 million.

According to TechCrunch, today’s funding, which follows a $28 million investment received earlier this year, gives Zopa a post-money valuation of $1 billion (£750 million).

Softbank Vision Fund 2 led the round, which saw contributions from existing investors including Silverstripe, Northzone and Augmentum. Zopa anticipates the cash will help bring its banking tools to more U.K. consumers.

Zopa is on track to hit profitability by early next year. If it does, it will be one of the fastest digital banks in the U.K. to do so. Additionally, if Zopa continues on this path of success, the company is likely to IPO at the end of next year.

Founded in 2004, Zopa debuted its peer-to-peer lending platform at FinovateSpring 2008. The company has since evolved as a player in the challenger banking space. Zopa’s differentiator from competitors, however, is that it is not a fully-fleged bank. The company does not offer a checking account or payment card. Instead, it focuses on savings, loans, and credit-building tools.

Zopa received its banking license in June of 2020. Since transitioning from its flagship peer-to-peer lending model, Zopa has reached $931 million (£675 million) in customer deposits for its savings accounts, has issued 150,000 credit cards, and is now a top 10 credit card issuer in the U.K. based on new customers.

The company’s lending products have also seen success. So far this year, Zopa has disbursed over $8.3 billion (£6 billion) in loans. The company lends over $138 million (£100 million) each year in car loans.

Zopa has formed two recent partnerships that centralize on helping users build and access credit. Its partnership with ClearScore helps provide a pre-approved credit card to Zopa customers who have been declined credit, and its integration with CreditLadder enables renters to build credit by reporting their rental payments.

As for what’s next, Zopa says it is “focused on building a sustainable, profitable business model” that benefits both customers and shareholders.

Photo by Visual Stories || Micheile on Unsplash

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More Than $1.1 Billion Raised by 14 Alums Q3 2021

More Than $1.1 Billion Raised by 14 Alums Q3 2021
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, David's column, Funding, Fundings, Quarterly Funding

For the third Q3 in a row, Finovate alums have raised at least $1 billion in equity funding. This year’s third quarter is consistent with both the amounts raised ($1.1 billion) and the number of alums securing investment (14) from the same quarter last year.

Interestingly, August continues to be a strong month for alum funding during the third quarter; for a third consecutive year, August investment has exceeded that of both July and September for our Finovate alums.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q3 2020: More than $1.2 billion raised by 14 alums
  • Q3 2019: More than $1 billion raised by 21 alums
  • Q3 2018: More than $400 million raised by 19 alums
  • Q3 2017: More than $1 billion raised by 31 alums
  • Q3 2016: More than $500 million raised by 30 alums

The third quarter of 2021 also saw one company, DriveWealth, become far and away the biggest recipient of investment dollars, topping the second biggest fundraiser by 3x. Three companies, M1 Finance, Alloy, and AuthenticID, secured triple-digit investments of at least $100 million.

The top ten equity investments, in a quarter with fourteen total alum fundraisings, represented the lion’s share of Q3’s investment total. Approximately 90% of the quarter’s total funding was represented by Q3’s top ten investments.

Top Ten Equity Investments for Q3 2021

  • DriveWealth: $450 million
  • M1 Finance: $150 million
  • Alloy: $100 million
  • AuthenticID: $100 million
  • Ocrolus: $80 million
  • Paystand: $50 million
  • Sezzle: $30 million
  • Dwolla: $21 million
  • Moneyhub: $18 million
  • Capitalise.com: $13.8 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q3 2021.

July 2021: More than $469 million raised by seven alums

August 2021: More than $476 million raised by five alums

September 2021: More than $180 million raised by two alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the third quarter of 2021, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

Photo by John Guccione www.advergroup.com from Pexels

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Pagaya and SoFi Team Up to Broaden Access to Financial Services for Borrowers

Pagaya and SoFi Team Up to Broaden Access to Financial Services for Borrowers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SoFi

A newly announced collaboration between AI-powered credit and analysis technology company Pagaya and personal financial services innovator SoFi will help more eligible consumers find and secure financing. The partnership will enable SoFi members to leverage Pagaya’s AI network to access a wider range of financial solutions in what Pagaya said is the largest deployment of its technology in the fintech space to date.

“We are excited to leverage SoFi’s sophisticated tech platform, strong brand, and consumer appeal to originate loans through Pagaya’s AI network,” SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said, “extending its business to a broader audience, so more people can access credit and achieve their financial goals.”

Pagaya’s technology and infrastructure enables financial institutions, including lenders and fintechs, to offer their customers access to financial products beyond those available via traditional credit models. Using both AI and machine learning, Pagaya lowers risk for lenders and helps them make better credit decisions. The goal is to provide a better, more positive experience for borrowers, and higher conversion rates for loan providers, as well as improving the overall credit ecosystem.

“As Pagaya grows, it is imperative that we partner with companies that share our vision of providing increased efficiency through our AI network for lenders and access for its customers,” Pagaya CEO and co-founder Gal Krubiner said. “Working with a company such as SoFi, we are able to apply our artificial intelligence in a way to not only help SoFi extend capital to more people, but do so in a way to create less risk for our partner. This creates a symbiotic, win-win-win ecosystem across all parties.”

Founded in 2016 and maintaining offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and Los Angeles, Pagaya became a public company earlier this fall in a $9 billion SPAC merger with EJF Acquisition Corporation. Earlier this month, Pagaya appointed former JP Morgan CMO Leslie Gillin to the post of Chief Growth Officer. Gillin arrives at a time when the company is looking to expand into new markets including personal and auto loans, credit cards, point-of-sale financing, single-family residencies, and more.

SoFi is an alum of our developers conference FinDEVrNewYork in 2017, which the company participated in with financial data platform Quovo. In the years since, SoFi has grown into a digital financial services giant with more than $50 billion in funded loans, and more than two million members who have paid off a total of more than $22 billion in debt. Additionally, the company recently has launched solutions such as SoFi Money and SoFi Invest which offer cash management (including early payday) and brokerage services, in a major expansion beyond its roots as online loan financing and refinancing innovator.

SoFi is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker SOFI and has a market capitalization of more than $16 billion. SoFi is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

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J’rrive! Arival Bank Launches As a Fully Licensed and Regulated Bank

J’rrive! Arival Bank Launches As a Fully Licensed and Regulated Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Arival Bank, Daily news

Arival Bank, which won Best of Show in its FinovateAsia debut in 2018, is now a fully licensed and regulated bank. The company was granted its U.S.-based banking license in Puerto Rico and will leverage its “U.S.-based but internationally friendly” license to work with customers around the world. The license generally allows banks to offer full stack fiat banking services, upon receiving the necessary authorization from the local regulator.

Arival Bank’s primary customers are international technology firms. The bank offers these companies USD-based bank accounts, and supports both domestic and international payments for global technology companies. Arival so far has onboarded more than 100 business customers from more than 25 countries, with the biggest demand coming from firms in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., European Union, and Singapore. Arival has experienced 1.7x month-over-month growth and boasts $13 million in assets under management.

“We’re focused on providing bank accounts to customers who have been labeled as ‘abnormal’ or ‘too risky’ by traditional banks,” Arival Bank COO Jeremy Berger explained in a statement. These firms include everything from international tech startups, digital SMEs, and money service businesses, to crypto exchanges and blockchain startups. “We’ve proudly turned this market of misfits into our niche, and we strongly believe the market demand of the ‘abnormal’ will soon outgrow the demand of the traditional banking clientele,” he said.

Arival’s management team (Director of IT Security Raul Rosado, Head of Finance Vivien Fernandez, CCO Sonia Camacho, Head of Global Compliance Ana Cavallini, Co-Founders Igor Pesin and Jeremy Berger) at the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

In terms of traction, Arival Bank recently was invited to FinCEN’s innovation program to showcase its compliance technology to more than 20 top U.S. regulators. FinCEN is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that focuses on defending the financial system against criminal and illicit activity, including money laundering. “We’ve built a compliance-first culture and like to think of ourselves as a cutting-edge compliance firm with a banking license,” Berger said. “That’s really our X factor at the end of the day.”

Additionally, Arival Bank has inked a partnership with Railsbank to launch SGD accounts and local payments as part of its borderless account opening offering. The company noted that it may leverage its relationship with Railsbank to expand its services in regions like Europe and Latin America.

“We’ve achieved significant traction since our launch – in large part thanks to our supportive group of visionary investors from our Seed and Pre-A rounds,” Arival Bank co-founder and CFO Igor Pesin said. “They’ve enabled us to invest heavily into key facets of building a digital bank fit for the 21st century: licensing, technology, infrastructure, compliance, and user experience.”

“We’re starting to gear up for our Series A round as we enter a new phase of growth driven by scaling our footprint internationally,” Pesin added. “Being live operationally is somewhat atypical for a licensed digital bank at their Series A round. In other words, our commitment to infrastructure meets our readiness to scale. And we have the license, product, and team to become the go-to digital bank for a new generation of businesses and entrepreneurs.”

Founded in 2018, Arival has 50 employees and hopes to double its workforce by 2022. The company’s investors to date include SeedInvest, Crowdcube, and Polyvalent Capital. Earlier his year, Arival Bank was nominated by Daily Finance as one of the top Fintech Companies in Singapore.

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SumUp Acquires FiveStars to Enter U.S. Market

SumUp Acquires FiveStars to Enter U.S. Market
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, SumUp

Just days after relaunching its online store and appointing a new CEO for its European operations, point of sale (POS) technology provider SumUp announced the acquisition of customer loyalty startup Fivestars for $317 million. The purchase marks SumUp’s sixth overall acquisition but its first in the U.S.

“Our global community of merchants has battled through lockdowns and volatility and we’re confident that this acquisition will further energize the U.S.’s recovering small business economy,” said SumUp Co-founder Marc-Alexander Christ. “Now is the time to make sure our presence is as strong in the U.S. as it is in Europe and, by acquiring Fivestars, SumUp will deliver for U.S.-based merchants as it has in other international markets.”

SumUp launched in 2011 and now helps three million merchants across the globe get paid. The company offers card reader, QR code and POS payment technologies, along with management and reporting tools and invoicing capabilities. Lacking in this product lineup, however, are loyalty and rewards offerings. This is where the integration of Fivestars’ technology comes in. Providing small business clients a way to reward their customers and build loyalty will help SumUp compete with other POS technology providers such as Square, Shopify, PayPal and Zettle.

Founded in 2010, Fivestars helps businesses set up a digital rewards program that gives customers points and gifts for their purchases. The technology automatically sends campaigns to welcome new customers, celebrate their birthdays, and bring back customers who haven’t visited recently. Fivestars also offers enterprise loyalty programs for larger franchises; clients include brands such as Play it Again Sports, Super Cuts, and Orange Leaf.

The acquisition will also help SumUp launch operations in a new geographical market. The U.K.-based company will now have access to Fivestars’ 70 million consumer members and 12,000 small businesses; a network which drives $3 billion in sales and 100 million transactions each year. Fivestars’ San-Francisco-based team, along with its CEO, Victor Ho, will remain in their roles and continue to operate Fivestars.

SumUp raised $869 million (€750 million) earlier this year, bringing its total funding to $1.4 billion. The company supports over three million merchant users in 34 markets.

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Digital Insurance Platform Sureify Secures $15 Million in Series C Funding

Digital Insurance Platform Sureify Secures $15 Million in Series C Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Sureify

In a round led by Aspen Capital Group, digital insurance platform Sureify has raised $15 million in Series C financing. The investment takes the company’s total equity capital to more than $26 million, and will enable Sureify to add to its platform and boost its research and development efforts.

“Ultimately, this funding lets us expand our insurers’ capabilities across digital sales, digital service, and digital engagement,” Sureify CEO Dustin Yoder said. “There is a massive opportunity to continue modernizing the legacy aspects of this industry and this investment in Sureify reinforces that we will help the traditional insurer compete against the emerging digital brands.”

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Sureify made its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateSpring 2014. In the time since, the company gained industry-leading life insurance companies as clients – including Allstate, Principal, State Farm, and Penn Mutual-owned Vantis Life. While a growing number of companies have pursued a direct-to-consumer approach to bringing innovation to the insurance industry, Sureify is among those insurtechs that is dedicated to helping legacy insurers successfully incorporate digital technology to better serve their customers. This includes leveraging personalized sales and service to enable insurers to deepen agent/policyholder relationships and boost ROI.

“Sureify has been on a mission to modernize the life insurance industry for nearly 10 years,” Yoder said. “We’ve now proven both large and small life insurers can digitally transform to compete against the direct-to-consumer entrants and meet the ever-changing consumer expectations year over year.” Yoder noted that Sureify’s technology enables insurance providers to pursue modernization without having to abandon their existing systems, and to do so quickly and without undue expense. “There are no longer questions about if traditional insurers can digitally transform sales, service, or engagement,” Yoder said. “The only real question is when?”

Sureify’s solutions include LifetimeACQUIRE, an omnichannel sales enabling solution that leverages quoting, e-application, and automated underwriting to drive placement rates; LifetimeSERVICE, which offers self-service portals and native apps for in-force customers; and LifetimeENGAGE, which features multi-faceted engagement programs and analytics to foster greater lifetime value of individual policyholders.

This year, Sureify has made a number of key executive changes and additions. The company began 2021 with the appointment of a new president Dan Gordon, who had served as Sureify’s Head of Strategy since 2018. The company brought on Ben Brantley as Chief Technology Officer in June and, last month, announced new Vice President of Product Rob Anagnoson.

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BioCatch Unveils Age Analysis Capability to Defend Seniors Against Fraud

BioCatch Unveils Age Analysis Capability to Defend Seniors Against Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BioCatch, Daily news

Behavioral biometrics innovator BioCatch launched its latest fraud-fighting solution this week. Age Analysis is a new account opening protection capability especially designed to help protect older consumers from fraud and other forms of cybercrime.

“We developed Age Analysis with enhancing customer protection and user experience as our guiding principles,” BioCatch Chief Operating Officer Gadi Mazor explained. “At BioCatch, we work closely with our clients to develop the most forward-thinking behavioral solutions to solve the ever-evolving challenges in combating fraud. Age Analysis empowers financial institutions with the behavioral verification protections most needed to address the growing threat of application fraud.”

The new offering, currently deployed by a number of international organizations as well as a “major credit card issuer,” was developed after noting that 40% of confirmed fraudulent credit card applications involved an applicant above the age of 60. BioCatch also discovered that a significant number of these applications ended up in manual review, increasing both the time spent processing the application as well as diminishing the user experience for older applicants.

Age Analysis works by extracting physical, cognitive, and other behavioral characteristics as the user engages in the account opening process. The technology monitors the activity continuously, predicting what BioCatch refers to as the user’s “approximate behavioral age” and compares it to the applicant’s declared age. If there are significant differences between the two, BioCatch adjusts the user’s risk score to reflect the anomaly.

The technology is based on the finding that certain behavioral characteristics involved in data input tend to change as individuals age. These include factors such as mouse click duration, mobile device orientation preferences, and even actions as specific as the time it takes for a user to shift from the CTRL key to a letter key when inputing data. Learn more about how Age Analysis works, and how it has helped increase company’s ability to detect account opening fraud and boost ROI, in BioCatch’s case study, Top Card Issuers Partner with BioCatch to Protect Senior Citizens from Fraud and Saving Millions.

A Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateFall 2014, BioCatch was founded in 2011 by Avi Turgemen, Benny Rosenbaum, and Uri Rivner to leverage insights derived from Turgemen’s experience in military intelligence to fight online fraud and other cybercrime. Most recently, the company announced joining Alkami Technology’s Gold Partner Program to bring its behavioral biometric technology to Alkami’s bank and credit union customers. In August, BioCatch teamed up with digital financial solution provider MoData to help the company’s clients in Africa better defend themselves against online fraud.

BioCatch has raised more than $213 million in funding from investors including Barclays and HSBC. The company has offices in both New York City and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels

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SumUp Enhances Online Store; Adds New European CEO

SumUp Enhances Online Store; Adds New European CEO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SumUp

London-based digital payments innovator SumUp announced the relaunch of its online store and the appointment of a new CEO for Europe: Michael Schrezenmaier.

The decision to enhance the SumUp Online Store is part of a strategic pivot toward online retail, an industry that grew significantly during the pandemic. “E-commerce has completely changed since we first launched the Online Store,” SumUp Vice President of Growth, Mark Wang said. “This shift has meant that an exponentially growing number of people now prefer to shop online.” The SumUp Online Store was initially launched in May 2020.

Among the new features offered are tools to enable business owners to set up a store in minutes due to a simplified signup process, a theme editor to customize storefronts, and a learning hub to support both new and veteran business owners. The upgraded platform also will no longer charge subscription fees, making it that much accessible to more small businesses.

“At SumUp our mission with the new Online Store is to provide a better platform for small businesses to reach customers anywhere in the world,” Wang added. “We are constantly working to build innovations that empower anyone to become an entrepreneur.”

Moving from platforms to people, SumUp also announced today that it has appointed Michael Schrezenmaier as its new CEO of Europe. Schrezenmaier comes to SumUp after serving as Chief Operating Officer and interim co-CEO for CRM platform Pipedrive and nearly seven years as COO at international dating company Spark Networks.

“SumUp is a company known for its entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to embrace change which, combined with its growth journey and continued upward trajectory, makes this an exciting time to join,” Schrezenmaier said, adding praise for the company’s innovation, “dedication to merchants,” and its leadership in the payment space overall.

Marc-Alexander Christ, co-founder of SumUp underscored the “quirks” and regional differences in Europe – and the unique aspects of the average European’s relationship with money – in explaining why Schrezenmaier was the right pick for the CEO spot. Christ called Schrezenmaier “a prime example of the type of person who will drive the company forward as we look to uphold our strong position in Europe – and deliver for our merchants.”

Founded in 2012 and making its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateEurope, SumUp has grown into a global digital commerce enabler and payments company. SumUp supports more than three million merchants around the world and boasts a workforce of 2,600+. The company has raised $1.4 billion in funding, most recently securing $893 million in debt financing in March of this year.

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