ICYMI funding round: Fondeadora, SEON, Lendo, Nomanini & more
With the fast-paced nature of the fintech world sometimes it’s easy for announcements to slip by. Here at FinTech Futures we’ve put together an “In Case You Missed It” (ICYMI) list of our funding picks this week.
Mexico City-based fintech Fondeadora has extended a Series A funding round and raked in $14 million.
Portag3 and Gradient Ventures are involved in the extension, on top of involvement from Y Combinator, Sound Ventures and Ignia.
The Mexican challenger aims to help underbanked people in its home country, and promises users an easy account opening service and swift issuing of a Mastercard debit card.
It also offers a numberless card featuring a QR code for peer-to-peer transactions.
Hungarian anti-fraud start-up SEON has secured the country’s largest Series A funding round, raking in €10 million.
Tamas Kadar, SEON CEO
The round was led by early-stage investor Creandum, and featured PortfoLion, part of OTP Bank.
New shareholders include executives at Europe’s leading fintechs: N26 founders Maximilian Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf, SumUp founders Stefan Jeschonnek and Jan Deepen, and Tide CEO Laurence Krieger.
SEON is a fraud-detection solution that draws on data from “across the internet” to establish customers’ digital footprints. It dubs itself “the Stripe of fraud prevention”.
SEON’s CEO Tamas Kadar says: “We feel we have found a like-minded investor to work closely with to pursue the significant global opportunity for our business as we continue to democratise fraud fighting.”
Lending marketplace provider Lendo has raised $7.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Derayah Ventures.
The round featured participation from Seedra, Shorooq Partners, 500 Startups, and Impact46.
Lendo offers small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the ability to digitally pre-finance their outstanding invoices.
It says it can solve two major pain points in the SME market: limited options for borrowing cash, and lack of short-term products with higher returns.
Lendo is licensed by SAMA (Saudi Central Bank) under its Sandbox Environment Program.
The firm says its new funds will accelerate the company’s plans to deepen its platform capabilities and expand the product offering.
UpSwot, a data collation fintech, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding from a range of investors, including CFV Ventures, ICBA, and First Southern National Bank.
The Upswot team
With this funding round, Upswot plans to expand its US footprint, continue hiring onshore staff and develop partnerships with Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks.
The firm claims a clientele including Raiffeisen Bank Aval, Société Générale RosBank, Mastercard, and ICBA.
Upswot provides financial institutions with “simple-to-use” data aggregation, visualisation, and analytics.
South African fintech Nomanini has raised $1.5 million from new and existing investors.
The firm operates a platform that helps merchants in emerging markets to distribute “digital goods” like airtime and prepaid electricity.
Nomanini is backed by South African lender Standard Bank, as well as the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank.
The firm says it is using its new cash to grow its network of providers, invest in product development, and expand its team.
The Cape Town start-up has raised $7.4 million across six rounds.
Related: ICYMI funding round-up: Exabel, ClearGlass, Cheese, Flowcast & more
