Microsoft and Nationwide invest $12m in SME lender BlueVine
Small business financing firm BlueVine has raised $12 million in new funding. Combined with the $60 million investment the company picked up last month, BlueVine’s Series E amounts to $72 million, and takes the company’s total funding to $590 million. Of this amount, $185 million represents equity financing, reports David Penn at Finovate.
This week’s investment comes from Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, and the venture arm of US insurance and financial services company, Nationwide.
BlueVine provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses, offering lines of credit up to $250,000 and invoice factoring up to $5 million. With rates starting 4.8% and approvals in 20 minutes, the company recently surpassed $1 billion in total funding volume.
“We had very limited resources when we began and we were up against bigger and more established competitors,” says BlueVine CEO and founder Eyal Lifshitz, who reflected on the company’s fifth anniversary as well as this week’s funding. He adds: “These new investments will help us offer more financing to even more entrepreneurs.”
This spring, BlueVine partnered with cross-border payments specialist, Veem.
BlueVine added Ana Sirbu as its new CFO at the beginning of the year.
