Funding

BlueVine Lands $130 Million in Debt Financing

BlueVine Lands $130 Million in Debt Financing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BlueVine, Funding

Alternative lending company BlueVine received a boost today, landing a $130 million round of debt funding. The company’s overall financing now totals $273 million, which is now comprised of $205 million in debt and $68 million in equity.

Supporting BlueVine in this round are Silicon Valley Bank, SunTrust Bank, Bank Leumi, and TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corporation. The company will use the funds to support its invoice factoring offering and grow its overall business. Ana Sirbu, BlueVine’s Vice President of Finance and Capital Markets said the company is “building a business for the long term” and notes that more than 80% of the company’s business comes from returning customers.

Additionally, the company has launched a new credit line that allows businesses to make payments on a monthly, instead of a weekly basis over the course of a 12-month term. Last year, the company increased its maximum line of credit to $100 million. “BlueVine’s goal is to offer the optimal solution for every working capital challenge faced by business owners, and our new product is another step forward in fulfilling this vision,” says BlueVine Founder and CEO Eyal Lifshitz. “Business owners have diverse needs, and by augmenting our product offering, we are able to offer the solution that fits best.”

Founded in 2013, BlueVine is best known for Invoice Factoring, in which it issues cash to small businesses who sell their unpaid invoices at a discount, then receive up to $2 million in working capital in a matter of days to help manage operations. This summer, the company partnered with Solomoto to combine its offering with Solomoto’s digital marketing platform.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Feedzai Secures $50 Million in New Funding

Feedzai Secures $50 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Feedzai, Funding

In a round led by an undisclosed investor, real-time, AI-enabled risk and fraud management platform Feedzai has raised $50 million in Series C funding. The financing, which takes Feedzai’s total capital to $82 million, also featured participation from existing investor Sapphire Ventures.

“We’ve made major headway on our vision in the last year, and this new round of funding will help us accelerate our growth as we continue to invest in the top people, as well as the most advanced data science and machine learning technology, to make banking and commerce safe across the globe,” Feedzai CEO and co-founder Nuno Sebastiao said. The company plans to grow its workforce to 300 by the end of 2017, and highlighted the hiring of former Box SVP Jim Priestly as its new Chief Revenue Officer as an example of the kind of year Feedzai has enjoyed.

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Feedzai demonstrated its Feedzai Fraud Prevention platform at FinovateEurope 2014. The company leverages artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning to provide fraud prevention solutions for banks, payment providers, and merchants. Securing online account opening, payments, and e-commerce are among the ways that Feedzai’s omnichannel fraud prevention solutions have been deployed since the company’s founding in 2008. “Feedzai’s proprietary platform puts the power back in the hands of merchants, issuers, and payment networks to manage risk while improving topline revenue,” Sapphire Ventures partner Anders Ranum said.

This summer Israel-based consumer credit card service provider Leumi Card announced that it would use Feedzai’s platform to detect and fight fraud. A member of Planet Compliance’s RegTech 100, Feedzai partnered with Co-op Financial Services in March and teamed up with the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) in February. We featured Feedzai in our January look at AI in fintech, A Fintech Filter for Artificial Intelligence in 2017.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

BankBazaar Receives $30 Million in Funding Round Led by Experian

BankBazaar Receives $30 Million in Funding Round Led by Experian
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BankBazaar, Funding

India-based online credit processing platform BankBazaar is sure to have a happy Diwali this year. That’s because the company has landed $30 million in a Series D funding round led by Experian.

The company didn’t name other contributors to today’s round, but cited existing backers Amazon, Sequoia, Eight Roads (Fidelity Growth Partners) and Walden International, who have helped boost BankBazaar’s total funding to $110 million. “The funds from this round will be used to further strengthen our position as the leader in secure paperless access to loans, cards, and Mutual Funds,” said BankBazaar CEO Adhil Shetty. The company also noted that it will use the funds to support international expansion efforts. BankBazaar has already made inroads into Singapore and is considering further expanding into Asia, the Middle East, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, UAE, and the Philippines.

Founded in 2008, BankBazaar serves as a single platform where users can shop for and access a variety of financial products, including mortgages, personal loans, car loans, credit cards, fixed deposit accounts, and insurance offered by more than 75 financial institutions. The company began focusing on paperless finance last year, when it introduced paperless loan applications. Shetty expects Experian to help it “accelerate towards [its] vision of paperless access to all financial products.”

Ben Elliott, CEO of Experian Asia Pacific, said, “We believe that consumer adoption of fully digital experiences coupled with paperless access to financial products will push customer acquisition 10X by 2020. With e-commerce shoppers growing significantly over the next few years, companies with paperless technology platforms are well-positioned to leverage the latest trends in consumer technology and help millions of Indians gain access to formal banking and finance products, further enabling financial inclusion for millions of underserved consumers.”

BankBazaar demoed its real-time credit processing platform at FinovateAsia 2012 in Singapore. The company recently partnered with Experian to offer users access to view their credit score for free. Last year, BankBazaar was awarded the ‘Emerging Brand of the Year’ and ‘CEO of the Year’ awards at the 7th CMO Asia Awards in Singapore for Excellence in Branding and Marketing.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Bill.com Discloses September Investment Round, Doubles Total Funding

Bill.com Discloses September Investment Round, Doubles Total Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Bill.com, Funding

Business payments network Bill.com has updated the news regarding the $100 million in funding it landed last month. The round was lead by JPMorgan Chase and Temasek, with participation from lead investors in each of Bill.com’s earlier funding rounds. The financing doubles the company’s previous funding total to $200 million.

In a blog post titled Funding for a Better Future in Digital Payments, Bill.com CEO René Lacerte said the company plans to do “what no other fintech company has been able to do before: eliminate checks and paper from the business operating manual.” Lacerte continued, “With this additional capital, we will cross the chasm shifting digital payments from early adoption to major, widespread market acceptance.”

Bill.com was founded in 2006 to help businesses manage accounts payables and receivables with online billpay, custom invoicing, document storage, collaboration tools, and more. Today, the company remains focused on digital, paperless payment options and offers the largest business payment network in the U.S. Bill.com’s 2.5 million members account for more than 1% of all U.S. businesses and process more than $50 billion in payments each year. The company has 100,000 customers and is partnered with four of the top 10 U.S. banks and with more than half of the top 100 accounting firms.

Bill.com’s Lacerte debuted the company’s CashView tools at FinovateSpring 2012. Last month, the company won the Accountex User Favorite Award in the Bill Pay Solution category. Most recently, Bill.com announced a partnership with JP Morgan Chase in which it will help Chase’s business customers manage their cash flow.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Worldpay Makes Strategic Contribution to Featurespace’s $21.9 Million Funding Round

Worldpay Makes Strategic Contribution to Featurespace’s $21.9 Million Funding Round
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Featurespace, Funding, WorldPay

Behavioral analytics company Featurespace has raised $21.9 million today. The round was led by Highland Europe and supported by Worldpay, Touchstone Innovations, Invoke Capital, and existing investors. Today’s investment brings the company’s total funding to $38.3 million.

Global payments company Worldpay will play a strategic role in the investment as well, forming a technology partnership with UK-based Featurespace. According to the agreement, Featurespace will leverage behavioral analytics to power risk management and fraud prevention services for Worldpay’s merchant clients. Atlanta-based company Worldpay will also use Featurespace’s technology to enhance its own capabilities in the development of Intelligent Payment Services.

Mark Kimber, Chief Information Officer at Worldpay, said that the company is “confident that this partnership will deliver superior outcomes for our customers, by preventing more fraudulent transactions whilst reducing the number of genuine transactions that are declined.” Kimber added, “We’ve been incredibly impressed by the evolution of this business and believe it has the potential to grow significantly. With our investment in the company, we are looking forward to supporting the Featurespace team as they grow their business and capabilities.”

At FinovateFall 2016, Featurespace demonstrated its ARIC Fraud Manager that understands the real-time behavior of each customer, then uses machine learning to prevent fraud by pinpointing anomalous behavior. The company’s clients — including Vocalink/Zapp, William Hill, and TSYS — have deployed products and services in more than 180 countries. In August, Featurespace was selected by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to power the organization’s fraud prevention solution. Earlier that month, the company teamed up with PwC to offer the firm’s clients a solution for combating financial crime risk.

Founded in 1989, Worldpay presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 about the payment journey. The company offers payment products and services to a client base of 400,000. Worldpay’s technology can process payments from 146 countries and 126 currencies, enabling customers to accept more than 300 different payment types. Earlier this summer, Worldpay agreed to merge with U.S. credit card processor Vantiv in a $10 billion deal.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

More than $1 Billion Raised by 31 Alums in Q3 2017

More than $1 Billion Raised by 31 Alums in Q3 2017
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings

Designed by Freepik

*Update: 10/10/2017. Bill.com disclosed today the amount of its September funding at $100 million. This takes our September 2017 funding total to more than $187 million, and puts Bill.com in our “top ten” fundings for the quarter, as well. The total raised for Q3 2017 now stands at $1.13 billion.

In reeling in more than $1 billion in funding over the months of July, August, and September, Finovate alums in the third quarter of 2017 raised more than twice as much in equity capital compared to Q3 2016. This happened with the number of alums funded in both Q3 2015 and Q3 2016 – 31 versus 30 – being virtually the same. In this regard, the third quarter of this year was even more impressive than the $1 billion raised by 40 alums in 2015. For all the concerns over the slow start to funding this year, it appears the world’s fintech investors are more than making up for lost time.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q3 2016: $500 million raised by 30 alums
  • Q3 2015: $1 billion raised by 40 alums
  • Q3 2014: $194 million raised by 17 alums

The biggest deals of the third quarter this year were the $250 million raised by Kabbage and the $225 million raised by Klarna. Also impressive were the pair of $100 million fundraisings by Blend and Coinbase, as well as the $70 million investment in Betterment that edges the company that much closer to unicorn status. The top 10 equity investments totaled more than $922 million or more than 89% of the quarter’s total alum funding.

Top 10 Equity Investments (equity only)

  1. Kabbage: $250 million
  2. Klarna: $225 million
  3. Blend: $100 million
  4. Coinbase: $100 million
  5. Betterment: $70 million
  6. Prosper: $50 million
  7. Juvo: $40 million
  8. Personal Capital: $40 million
  9. Stockpile: $30 million
  10. Karmic Labs: $17.2 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q3 2017.

July 2017: More than $374 million raised by 15 alums

August 2017: More than $570 million raised by 10 alums

September 2017: More than $187 million raised by six alums

If you are a Finovate/FinDEVr alum that raised money in the third quarter of 2017, 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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Truphone Raises $339 Million to Fuel Global Expansion

Truphone Raises $339 Million to Fuel Global Expansion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Truphone

What would you do with $339 million? London-based mobile operator Truphone gets to answer that question today, as the company closes its $339 million (£255 million) private equity round. This brings Truphone’s total funding to more than $430 million.

The company will use the funds to retire its debt, help it “disrupt the trillion-dollar mobile industry and power the world’s connected devices,” and fuel its global expansion. Aside from its London headquarters, Truphone currently has offices in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and in three cities across the U.S. in New York, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Truphone CEO Ralph Steffens said that the funding will empower the company to “offer highly differentiated Enterprise products and are the enabler of choice for disruptive IoT and eSIM solutions.” Steffens adds, “It is an important step in achieving our long-term goal to power billions of connected devices around the world.”

Founded in 2006, Truphone leverages eSims (software-based SIMs) to enable mobile customers to use their voice and data allowances across 40 countries without incurring roaming charges. In addition to SIM-based data plans, Truphone also offers mobile plans for businesses and a mobile recording solution, which it showcased at FinovateEurope 2014. Truphone Mobile Recording enables businesses and banks to record, encrypt, and store mobile communications securely and without disrupting the user experience.

The company has 350 employees across 10 countries. In July, Truphone formed a strategic partnership with Apple to allow iPad users to stay connected across 50 countries. Earlier this fall, the company earned its spot on the Inc. 5000 Europe list, which ranks private companies based on three-year revenue growth.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Stockpile Raises $30 Million to Boost Millennial Stock Ownership

Stockpile Raises $30 Million to Boost Millennial Stock Ownership
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Stockpile

Millennial-focused brokerage firm Stockpile has pulled in $30 million this week in a Series B funding round led by Fidelity. Mayfield, Arbor Ventures, Hanna Ventures, Wang Ventures, and others also participated.

This investment boosts the California-based company’s total raised to $45 million. Avi Lele, Stockpile’s founder and CEO said the company will use the funds to “bring stock investing to more millennial customers and expand its unique features.”

David Milstein of Eight Roads, who is joining Stockpile’s board as a part of the investment said, “Stockpile has had tremendous success in attracting the next generation of investors.” He adds, “Their innovative approach takes the mystery out of stock investing and opens up access to all. They have put the stock market on a gift card.”

Stockpile launched in 2015 and sells its gift cards directly to consumers online and on store shelves via a partnership with Blackhawk Network. The company has also partnered with a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Verizon and FIS, who offer Stockpile gift cards as employee and/or customer incentives.

“We’re on a mission to make it simple for everyone – especially young, first-time investors – to save and invest for their future,” said Lele. “Fractional shares make market investing fun, easy, and personal. Even someone with only a few dollars can buy a piece of a favorite brand like Amazon or Alphabet, which are currently trading close to $1000 a share.”

Earlier this year Stockpile made a move to boost its client base with former Loyal3 customers and in 2016 the company acquired SparkGift, transferring SparkGift’s customer base to its own brokerage platform for free. Founded in 2010, by Avi Lele and Sanj Kulkarni, Stockpile launched at FinovateSpring 2014 in a demo that won Best of Show.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Swych Seals Series A Funding

Swych Seals Series A Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Swych

Digital gifting platform Swych has closed its Series A round with a “major strategic capital investment” from UAE Exchange Group. The amount of the investment was undisclosed.

“Swych’s global gifting technology and vision fits well with our strategy to foster purpose-based money transfers,” UAE Exchange Group CEO Promoth Manghat said. “As a group, we are always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with organizations that drive innovation, provide differential services and promote digital initiatives,” he added. “In Swych, we see a unique value proposition that checks all these boxes.”

Swych’s platform gives users the ability to send “swychable” digital gifts from their mobile device that are redeemable for electronic gift cards from more than 120 retail partners. Users can also upload their plastic gift cards to the Swych mobile app and checkout using their smartphone to scan the bar code at the register. They can also earn rewards points that can be used to buy “swychable” gift cards. Businesses can use the company’s GiftBot platform or its “Gifting-as-a-Service” APIs to produce their own customized digital gift cards.

UAE Exchange and Swych will work together to develop digital gifting services for international markets, with a U.S.-to-India service under consideration as an initial launch. Swych founder and CEO Deepak Jain underscored the opportunity of leveraging UAE’s international reach, saying it would “greatly accelerate Swych in its mission to become the leader in digital cross-border gifting services globally.” A money transfer, foreign exchange, and payments solutions provider, UAE Exchange has in excess of 200,000 agent locations in more than 160 countries and 15+ million customers worldwide. UAE Exchange was established in 1980 and is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Plano, Texas-based Swych won Best of Show for its demonstration of the Swych Mobile Gifting Platform at FinovateFall 2016. The mobile app is available for free at both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

With New Funding, Prosper’s Valuation Stands at $550 Million

With New Funding, Prosper’s Valuation Stands at $550 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Prosper

U.S. peer-to-peer lending giant, Prosper has landed $50 million in a Series G funding round. The capital come from Hong Kong-based FinEx Asia and LPG Capital and raises the San Francisco-based company’s total equity funding to $410 million.

Prosper will use the financing to make strategic investments in the company’s platform and products. “This investment is a strong signal of confidence in our business fundamentals and the momentum we are seeing right now,” said David Kimball, CEO of Prosper Marketplace. “Over the past year, we’ve shown that we can build a sustainable business that continues to redefine the online lending experience for our borrowers and investors. We believe this partnership will open up additional opportunities for our business as we continue to grow.”

According to Lend Academy, Prosper’s valuation is now $550 million; a 70% drop from the company’s estimated 2015 valuation of $1.87 billion. However, Lend Academy also noted that Prosper’s decline aligns with competitor Lending Club’s valuation, which experienced a share price drop of 68% since April of 2015.

Marketplace lending as a whole has experienced a downturn in the past couple of years, and Prosper had to endure a stumbling block of its own in July of this year when it shuttered its Prosper Daily app. Aimed at prospective borrowers, the app was built from Prosper’s purchase of BillGuard in 2015 for $30 million.

Despite the setbacks, Prosper reported relatively strong second quarter performance this year, with $775 million in loan originations. This represents a 32% quarter-over-quarter increase and 74% year-over-year increase. Overall, the company has facilitated more than $10 billion in consumer loans over its platform since launching in 2006.

Prosper presented at FinovateSpring 2009 as well as the inaugural Finovate in 2007. Earlier this year, the company appointed Usama Ashraf as Chief Financial Officer and in November of 2016, selected David Kimball to succeed Aaron Vermut as CEO. Forbes interviewed Kimball in a feature this spring.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Cloud Lending Solutions Picks Up Investment from ABN Amro’s Digital Impact Fund

Cloud Lending Solutions Picks Up Investment from ABN Amro’s Digital Impact Fund
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Cloud Lending Solutions, Funding

ABN AMRO’s venture capital fund, the Digital Impact Fund (DIF) has made an investment in Cloud Lending Solutions this week. The amount of the funding was not disclosed. “We are excited for the long-term support of ABN AMRO’s Digital Impact Fund with this investment,” Cloud Lending Solutions CEO Snehal Fulzele said in a statement. “We look forward to working with DIF to deepen out global footprint and broaden our lending impact.”

This week’s funding adds to the more than $8 million in capital already raised by Cloud Lending Solutions, which also completed a Series B round in February (amount undisclosed). ABN AMRO joins SF Capital Group and Cota Capital as investors in the company.

Pictured: Cloud Lending Solutions co-founder and CEO Snehal Fulzele demonstrating CL Exchange at FinovateSpring 2015.

Director of DIF, Hugo Bongers, praised the company’s management team, its “broad and innovative product portfolio,” and its track record. “With Cloud Lending Solutions’ robust worldwide growth, they will be able to utilize our investment to further their global expansion,” Bongers said. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Cloud Lending Solutions also currently has offices in London, Sydney, and Bangalore.

Cloud Lending Solutions provides end-to-end loan and leasing technology that digitizes every aspect of the lending process including origination, underwriting, servicing, and collections. Built natively on Salesforce.com, the company’s solutions enable FIs to leverage the cloud to provide alternative financing to unbanked and underbanked communities worldwide. Founded in 2012, Cloud Lending Solutions demonstrated its CL Exchange platform at FinovateSpring 2015. CL Exchange gives participating online marketplaces and lenders the ability to exchange both consumer and business loan applications to source the most appropriate loans for each company’s lending portfolio. Last month, the company introduced new enhancements to its CL Lease solution in an upgrade that included more than 45 specific product changes and “hundreds of smaller updates.”

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Bambu Wins Strategic Investment from Franklin Templeton

Bambu Wins Strategic Investment from Franklin Templeton
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bambu, Funding

Singapore-based B2B roboadvisor Bambu has completed a funding round that featured a strategic investment from Franklin Templeton Investments and venture capital funding from Wavemaker Partners, part of the Draper Venture Network. Also participating in the round was fintech and global robo advisor investor and advocate, Robby Hilkowitz.

“Bambu is now a growth stage company in the rapidly changing world of digital wealth,” Bambu CEO and co-founder Ned Phillips said. “To gain support from leading industry players brings great momentum towards our goal of becoming the market leader in the space.” He added that the company would use the new capital to speed business development and sales efforts, as well as bolster research and development.

Although the amount of this week’s investment was not made public, TechinAsia reports that the company’s total funding is more than $1 million, including a $400,000 seed round in the spring of 2016.

Pictured (left to right): Bambu CEO Ned Phillips and COO Aki Ranin demonstrating the Robo and Intelligent Digital Advisory platform at FinovateAsia 2016.

Bambu’s strategy as a robo advisory platform is to de-commoditize the industry by offering solutions that are tailored to specific markets.  The company offers an Intelligent Advisor solution that is geared toward private banks and wealth managers working with high net worth clients. Bambu also has a white-label, robo advisory platform for affluent and retail investors that enables banks and asset managers to offer clients the ability to build personalized, goal-based portfolios.

Wavemaker Partners managing partner Paul Santos credited the experience of Bambu co-founders Ned Phillips and Aki Ranin in support of the firm’s investment. Praising the pair’s “deep domain expertise building scalable, sustainable businesses,” Santos added, “Ned and Aki have gone from strength to strength to find customers that love their product and have built up a promising pipeline.”

Bambu demonstrated its Robo and Intelligent Digital Advisory platform at its Finovate debut in Hong Kong in November 2016. In January, Bambu won Best Early Startup at the Next Money Fintech Finals in Hong Kong. Finovate research analyst Julie Muhn highlighted the company in her look at “Top Business-to-Business Wealth Tech Players” earlier this year. Bambu is a veteran of Hong Kong’s SuperCharger FinTech Accelerator 2.0, sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank and Fidelity International. The company was founded in 2016.

Interested in fintech in Asia? FinovateAsia returns to Hong Kong this November. Visit our FinovateAsia 2017 page for more information. Reserve your ticket by September 29th to take advantage of early-registration savings.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook