ICYMI fintech funding round-up: Butter, Mondu, kompasbank and more
At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) funding round-up for you to get the latest funding news.
US paytech Butter has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners to help fuel its growth.
Butter lands $22m Series A
Existing investors Atomic, Transpose Platform and Spring Tide Capital also participated in the round.
Butter has built a solution powered by machine learning designed to “end accidental payment churn”.
“Accidental churn is the single leading cause of subscription churn, resulting in nearly $500bn in lost revenue on account of false declines per year,” says founder and CEO Vijay Menon.
“In the race to stem fraud, payments are being falsely declined at artificially inflated rates. Many companies are unaware that this problem exists at all.
“Being able to parse through the metadata in real-time to make intelligent decisions around which transactions should and should not be authorised is not an easy task, and subscription businesses today are not equipped to handle this challenge at scale.
“Butter has built a Recovery engine powered by machine learning that automates these decisions in real time so that you don’t have to.”
German B2B payments company Mondu has secured $13 million in a Series A extension round led by Valar Ventures and FinTech Collective.
The extension takes the total investment round to $56 million. The firm says the funds will “enable further market growth and product development”.
Mondu provides payment solutions that enable merchants and marketplaces to offer their business customers the most popular B2B payment methods with flexible payment terms at checkout.
The company introduced a buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution for the Austrian and Dutch markets last year.
It is currently exploring new use cases for its B2B payment products, such as an omnichannel solution.
Danish neobank kompasbank has raised $13 million (€12 million) in fresh funding as it looks to boost its business lending and platform development.
The SME-focused bank, which secured a banking licence from the Danish FSA in March 2021, provides loans for fixed and current assets, working capital, property and minor acquisition financing.
Kompasbank says the new capital has been provided by “both new and existing investors” and will enable the firm to “deepen current customer relations and to better serve and develop additional financial services targeted to SMEs”.
BankSathi raises $4m
Indian social commerce platform BankSathi has raised $4 million in funding from Kotak Securities, Lets Venture, We Founder Circle, Hem Securities and IPV (Inflection Point Ventures).
The firm says the new funds will be used to “invest in high-calibre employees across all the company’s operations and to accelerate the development of new products and technology”. The company also has plans to expand its geographic reach into new regions.
BankSathi uses priority algorithms to recommend financial products to advisors based on a customer’s profile and past transactions. It is currently partnered with 60+ financial institutions, including HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, IDFC First, SBI, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Bank of Baroda.
Flik, an Indonesian start-up that offers a unified checkout solution, has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding led by East Ventures, with participation from Init-6, GMO VenturePartners and Saison Capital.
“Flik is here to help brands enhance their direct-to-consumer (D2C) transactions by unifying the checkout experience across different sales channels,” says co-founder and CEO Ahmad Gadi.
“We believe our solutions will solve the pain points experienced by shoppers in completing e-commerce transactions across different channels, further empowering brands and content creators to scale.”
With the new funds, the firm says it plans “to embed itself into all aspects of the consumer shopping journey”, including “product discovery, price comparison, express checkout with rewards, and post-purchase services such as processing refunds and returns for shoppers”.
Singapore-based digital bank Inypay has secured an undisclosed amount of funding as it gears up for launch later this year.
The firm describes itself as “Asia’s first next-gen financial experience platform” and is targeting “blue-collar workers and micro-SMEs”.
Inypay plans to offer micro-lending, personalised and communal savings, payments and remittance and micro-insurance services, as well as invoice financing and working capital loans for small businesses.
