Fintech funding round-up: 19 January 2018
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s (18 January) fintech funding fun, here’s another round-up. Stars Varo Money, OakNorth Bank, NetPay and ISME ACE.
Let’s start in San Francisco. Varo Money, a mobile banking start-up, has closed a $45 million Series B funding round led by existing investor Warburg Pincus, a global private equity (which has also bought into Avaloq), and The Rise Fund, led by private equity firm TPG.
The money will be used for growth plans for Varo’s banking app. With the closing of this round, Varo says it will have raised more than $78 million in less than two years. By the way, Varo bank accounts are provided by The Bancorp Bank.
Onto a smaller sum, and to the UK. OakNorth Bank says it has completed a £1 million loan to NetPay, a payment services provider founded in 2012. The finance will be used for “daily operations” and unspecified growth plans.
NetPay offers credit and debit card payment processing through face to face, online and over the phone payment services. It has two core business segments: NetPay Merchant Services, offering payment processing solutions; and Technologi – a software solutions provider that supports banks and other payments businesses through its Revolution platform. It says it works with 7,000 businesses per month in the UK. The technology is currently being rolled out to support 14 countries and eight languages on “the back of recent contract wins”.
In India, ISME ACE, an accelerator for fintech start-ups, intends to set up an INR 1 billion ($15.6 million) fund for investments in start-ups. According to the Hindu BusinessLine, the plan is to raise the money from various investors including that of Three Sisters Institution, promoted by Yes Bank MD and CEO Rana Kapoor and run by his daughters – Radha, Raakhe and Roshni.
Talking to BusinessLine, Aparajit Bhandarkar, chief acceleration officer at ISME ACE, says the money “will be used to invest in fintech start-ups over the next two-three years”. He declined to give a timeline for the new fund but does reveal five cohorts of about ten to 12 start-ups each. Bhandarkar adds that the accelerator would typically invest $100,000-200,000 in each start-up by picking up 5-12% equity. In return, ISME ACE would offer access to a “financial, investor and entrepreneurial ecosystem, workspace infrastructure support, advisory guidance and need-based mentorship”.
