• Swedish B2B financing company Qred launched a B2B payments platform for its business users.
• The new tool enables users to pay invoices using their Qred Visa credit card from within the Qred mobile app.
• Helping to fuel this new tool is $11 million (€10 million) in funding from existing investor Nordic Capital. The investment brings Qred’s total funding to $70.7 million.

Small business financing company Qred is making its platform a bit more powerful for its small business clients this week. The Sweden-based company unveiled a new B2B payments platform that will enable business users to pay any invoice using their Qred Visa card from within the Qred app, benefitting from Qred’s 45-day interest-free liquidity.

Founded in 2015, Qred offers an alternative lending platform for small businesses that makes the funding process simple, digital, and fast. The company helps businesses receive the working capital they need within 24 hours of applying.

The Qred Visa credit card is free for small business users and offers 1% cash back with every purchase. Businesses can use the Qred card and mobile app to pay invoices from billers that use Sweden’s clearing system, Bankgiro, even if the biller doesn’t accept card payments. And users can postpone their payment, interest-free for up to 45 days.

For now, Qred’s invoice payment tool is free for businesses when they use their Qred Visa card. However, starting in August of this year, there will be a 2.5% transaction fee.

“Tens of billions of dollars worth of invoices are issued each year and for most businesses the only way to pay them is to use cash directly from their account since most suppliers or vendors don’t accept card payments,” said Qred CEO Emil Sunvisson. “With our new payment platform, small businesses can use their Qred Visa to pay any invoice they have with much more flexible payment terms. This frees up much needed, short-term cash which is the life blood of most entrepreneurs.”

Qred also announced today it has received $11 million (€10 million) from existing investor Nordic Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $70.7 million. The company will use the investment to “continue to deliver innovative products and services to small businesses throughout Northern Europe.”

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• ClearBank raised $230 million (£175 million).
• The investment was led by private equity advisory firm Apax Digital and brings ClearBank’s total funding to $627 million.
• ClearBank will use the funds to expand internationally, first in Europe, then into North America and Asia Pacific.

Clearing and embedded banking technology company ClearBank raised $230 million (£175 million) this week. The investment brings the U.K.-based company’s total funding to $627 million.

Funds advised by private equity advisory firm Apax Digital led the round. Existing investors CFFI UK Ventures and PPF Financial Holdings, also participated. ClearBank plans to use the investment to expand its client base in Europe and eventually into North America and Asia Pacific.

Launched in 2017, ClearBank is a regulated bank that manages transactions from beginning to end, starting with order transmission and including settlement, liquidity management, and clearing activities. The company counts 200 bank and fintech clients– including Tide, Coinbase, Chip, and Oaknorth Bank– that leverage its tools to power faster payments, clearing, and payments activities. In all, ClearBank facilitates 13 million accounts totaling almost $4 billion in assets.

One of the company’s primary offerings is embedded banking tools. ClearBank enables businesses and financial services companies to offer bank accounts with FSCS deposit protection, FX tools, and multi-currency accounts to their own clients. All of the company’s regulated services can be accessed via a single API.

“ClearBank is the first proven and fully regulated cloud-native clearing bank in the U.K. for over 250 years,” said ClearBank CEO Charles McManus. “Over the last five years we have demonstrated the success of our business model and through our work with leading financial service providers, helped to both unlock their potential and bring about positive and meaningful change for U.K. businesses and consumers.”

As for what’s next, McManus points to a more global future for his company. “The next challenge is delivering this innovation globally. To achieve this, we needed a strategic partner with the right cultural fit, sector expertise and geographic experience, something we found in Apax Digital.” Additionally, ClearBank plans to add products and services that will help its clients scale internationally. To do this, the company will add direct API-based access to interbank payment schemes, enhanced multi-currency accounts, and additional FX services.

ClearBank is at the center of the flourishing banking-as-a-service trend that has both fintech and non-fintech companies adding banking services to their existing offerings. The company has experienced burgeoning growth and was recognized by Deloitte as the fastest-growing tech company in its 2021 U.K. Technology Fast 50 awards. In other accolades, ClearBank received the Best Service Award at the 2021 Card & Payments Awards.

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• Financial crime compliance firm Silent Eight raised $40 million in Series B funding.
• The investment gives the Singapore-based company $55 million in total capital.
• Led by TYH Ventures, the Series B round featured participation from HSBC Ventures, Silent Eight’s latest customer.

Silent Eight, an AI-based financial crime compliance company, has secured $40 million in Series B funding. The round was led by TYH Ventures and included top-up investments from OTB Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures, Aglaia, as well as chairman and general partner of Altara Ventures, Koh Boon Hwee. Also participating in the round was HSBC Ventures, Silent Eight’s most recent customer.

“HSBC has been pleased with the progress made by Silent Eight’s AI platform,” HSBC Ventures’ Ore Adeyemi said. “We look forward to continuing to strengthen our partnership through this investment, and we are excited that my colleague Tom Caine is also joining as a Board Observer to help drive this investment partnership.”

Announced in January of last year, the multi-year partnership between Silent Eight and HSBC will enable the bank to enhance its compliance operations. HSBC will integrate Silent Eight Alert Resolution which investigates and resolves compliance issues as well as a human analyst, but with greater speed, precision, and accuracy.

The Series B investment gives Silent Eight $55 million in total capital and quadruples the company’s previous valuation reported in October 2020. Over the same time period, Silent Eight has realized revenue growth of 6x and tripled its workforce.

“We are here to support our customers and the policy makers of the world by ensuring that the benefits of the most advanced Artificial Intelligence systems are available on the frontlines of crime fighting,” Silent Eight CEO and founder Martin Markiewicz said.

Silent Eight builds compliance platforms for many of the world’s leading financial institutions. Deployed in more than 150 markets, the company’s AI-powered platform enforces economic sanctions and investigates all other financial crime risks – including suspicious transactions, beneficiaries, and customers – in real time. Silent Eight helps businesses understand the risks that may be present in both new and existing customer relationships, identify the payment stakeholder in every transaction, and monitor all transactions for potentially fraudulent behavior.

Silent Eight plans to use the capital to expand technology functions in order to support rapid growth in its customer base. The company also plans to hire additional talent, including more than 150 data scientists, developers, and engineers this year. Headquartered in Singapore, Silent Eight maintains global hubs in New York, London, and Warsaw.

Silent Eight co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Julia Markiewicz was recognized by The Financial Technology Report as one of its Top 25 Women Leaders in Financial Technology of Europe for 2022. She was also named to TechNode Global’s roster of top emerging women-led startups in Southeast Asia.

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• A specialist in delivering financial services to immigrant communities, Stilt, has closed a $14 million Series A round.
• The company also secured a $100 million debt facility and launched a new credit-as-a-service offering, Onbo.
• Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Stilt was founded in 2015.

Stilt, a fintech that specializes in providing financial services to immigrant communities, has raised $14 million in new funding. The Series A round was led by Link Ventures, and featured participation from Petrushka Investments, Hillsven Capital, and investor Gokul Rajaram. A number of C-level technology executives were also involved in the funding, including Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Checkout.com CTO Ott Kaukver, and Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra.

Along with the funding announcement, the San Francisco, California-based company reported that it also has closed a new $100 million debt facility and launched its new credit-as-a-service offering, Onbo. The new solution enables any business to create and market its own credit product without requiring a bank sponsor. Onbo relies on Stilt’s state lending licenses and compliance framework, managing origination, payments, and credit reporting to free up companies to focus on developing their credit solution. Among the kinds of credit products that Onbo enables are credit building tools, revolving lines of credit, and personal loans. Onbo is powered by a single API to facilitate integration, and also offers companies up to $1 million in debt capital to help them get started.

Additionally, Onbo funds user accounts, deducts payments, and updates reimbursements in real time. The solution features a loan management system that can use both its own built-in accounting tools or accounting tools from third-party solution providers.

“Onbo represents a new path forward for neobanks looking to launch a credit product,”Stilt co-founder and CEO Rohit Mittal said. “We’ve spent five years at Stilt getting state lending licenses, building our credit stack, and refining our risk models. Now we’re opening the entire stack for others to build innovative credit products in just a few weeks. This is the quickest way we can think of to democratize loans and credit building across the board.”

Founded in 2015, Stilt has provided financing to people from more than 150 countries around the world. Specializing in lending to immigrants and other underserved individuals, Stilt does not require cosigners and does not charge prepayment fees. Instead, the company focuses on a “holistic profile” that references a range of indications of financial responsibility such as employment or employability, education, and financial behavior. Loans from $1,000 to $35,000 are available, with repayment terms ranging from 12 months to 36 months.

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• Acorns has raised $300 million in Series F funding.
• The investment, led by private equity firm TPG, gives the company a valuation of $1.9 billion.
• The fundraising comes after the company abandoned its plan to go public via a SPAC merger.

Savings and investing app Acorns has raised $300 million in Series F funding in a round led by TPG. The investment gives the company a valuation of $1.9 billion and comes in the wake of the company’s decision to abandon a plan to go public via a SPAC merger that could have delivered Acorns a valuation in the neighborhood of $2.2 billion.

Also participating in the round were BlackRock, Bain Capital Ventures, and Galaxy Digital among others. Acorns said that it plans to use the additional funding to expand its offerings (including cryptocurrrency exposure), to enhance the ability of users to personalize their portfolios, and to fuel acquisitions. The company has raised a total of $507 million in capital, according to Crunchbase.

The investment comes amid increasing concerns over the fate of high growth fintechs in the public markets of late. In an interview with CNBC, Acorns CEO Noah Kerner pointed to “very volatile” markets as one of the reasons his company retreated from the SPAC market, saying he feared Acorns would be treated the same as other high growth technology companies whose valuations were coming under critical scrutiny. Kerner took solace in the successful Series F round which he said reflected the determination of Acorns’ private investors to support growing companies, “but not grow-at-all costs companies.”

Founded in 2012 by father and son Walter and Jeffrey Cruttenden, Acorns offers a platform that leverages micro- and robo-investing to help individuals and families save and invest. With as little as $3 a month, users can choose from among a number of diversified, exchange-traded fund (ETF) based portfolios with different asset allocation strategies. Automatic portfolio rebalancing is provided, and users can set up automatic recurring investments starting at $5 a day, week, or month, to take advantage of the efficiencies of fractional investing and dollar cost averaging. Acorns also offers a Round-Ups feature that enables users to automatically invest the spare change from their everyday purchases when they link their credit or debit card to their Acorns account.

With more than 4.6 million paid subscribers on its platform, Acorns has $4.7 billion in assets under management as of May of last year according to its Form ADV. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California.

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• Shares, a new social investment app based in Paris, has raised $40 million in Series A funding.
• The app combines fractional share investing with features that enable users to observe the investing behavior of others, as well as collaborate on investment strategies.
• The app is available to investors in the U.K. The company plans to bring the solution to investors in other European countries “in the future.”

In a round led by Valar Ventures, social investment app Shares has raised $40 million in Series A funding. The investment comes as the Paris-based fintech goes live with its app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, and lifts the company’s total capital to $50 million.

Shares’ technology enables investors to buy and sell shares in public companies, and adds the ability for friends and colleagues to collaborate when it comes to investing and building investment strategies. The app allows for fractional share investing, users can open accounts with as little as £1.00, and there are no fees for buying and selling shares. What helps distinguish Shares from other mobile-first investment platforms is the ability to create discussion groups to facilitate information-sharing with other investors and traders on the app. Shares also features an investment activity feed that enables users to see when their friends are buying and selling shares.

The app is currently available only to investors in the U.K.; the company has provided a waitlist for interested individuals in the E.U. Shares is partnered with Alpaca Securities LLC, which is serving as the company’s execution broker.

Headquartered in Paris, France, Shares was co-founded by Benjamin Chemia (CEO), François Ruty (CTO) and Harjas Singh (CPO) and maintains offices in London and Krakow, as well. The goal of the company was to reduce barriers to investing, especially for first-time investors. With fractional share investing and a social component that makes it easy to learn, share, and collaborate, Shares seeks to counter the notion that investing is “boring and lonely” and, instead, show that investing is “something everyone can enjoy.”

“Despite having worked in finance, I know from my own experience as a retail investor how inaccessible the world of investing can be even with today’s lower barrier, commission-free apps,” Singh said last fall. “There is a real consumer demand for a social-first app like Shares designed to level the playing field so anyone can join the conversation and become an investor.”

Joining Valar Ventures in the funding round were existing investors Singular, Global Founders Capital, and Red Sea Ventures.

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• Bulgaria-based Payhawk extended its Series B funding round by $100 million to $215 million.
• The investment values Payhawk at over $1 billion and brings its total funding to $239 million.
• The company currently serves businesses in 30 countries and will use the recent funding to pursue further global expansion.

Bulgaria may be known more for its beaches and opera singers than it is for its fintech. Business spend management platform Payhawk may soon change that, however. The Bulgarian-based fintech just extended its recent Series B round by $100 million and is now valued at over $1 billion. This new valuation makes Payhawk Bulgaria’s first unicorn.

The fresh funding brings its Series B round to $215 million and boosts its total funding to $239 million. Today’s round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and saw participation from Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures, and Jigsaw VC.

Payhawk’s $1 billion valuation is a huge leap forward for the fintech. Just three months ago when the company first announced its Series B round, Payhawk was valued at $570 million. It now sits 75% higher.

Payhawk, which currently serves businesses in 30 countries, will use the investment to expand its presence in the mid-size enterprise market and pursue global expansion. The company will open offices in Paris and Amsterdam this month and will add one in New York in September.

To support this growth, Payhawk plans to ramp up its workforce by 3x. The company plans to grow from 100 to 300 employees by the end of this year. As part of this expansion, Payhawk will increase the size of its product team by adding 60 additional senior software engineers to meet customer demand for new features.

Payhawk was founded in 2018 to offer businesses a way to control company spending. In addition to payment cards, the startup offers invoicing, employee reimbursement, and billpay tools along with accounting software integration, built-in spending policies, and analytics.

“Every employee that deals with company payments feels that there should be a better way to do it, but this huge problem was never tackled by a strong product team with a hardcore engineering background,” said Payhawk Founder and CEO Hristo Borisov. “This is what Payhawk brings to the market.”