Invoice finance platform MarketInvoice raises $33.5M from Barclays, Santander
London, with its huge FinTech hub, is continuing to attract investment and that is no better represented today than with the news that MarketInvoice, arguably Europe’s largest online invoice finance platform, has raised £26M ($33.5M) in a Series-B funding round led by Barclays and fintech fund Santander InnoVentures, alongside participation from European VC Northzone, which previously invested. In August last year Barlcays took a minority equity stake in the company and rolled out the service to its large SME client base.
Technology credit fund Viola Credit, which also participated, will additionally provide a debt facility of up to £30m to help scale the MarketInvoice business loans solution which is part of its core invoice finance solutions.
The funding will be used to deepen MarketInvoice’s market in the UK and launch what it called “cross-border fintech-bank partnerships” which it would be reasonable to conclude would include expanding into new markets.
Established in 2011, MarketInvoice has funded invoices and business loans to UK companies worth more than £2 billion, and they claim to be Europe’s largest online invoice finance platform.
Anil Stocker, Co-founder & CEO told me: “for us strategic partnerships, especially those where we can use new sources of data, are becoming increasingly important. Our mission is to help as many entrepreneurs as possible gain access to finance… Barclays realises it’s a good way of upgrading their offering to SMEs, and get more lending out to help these businesses. For us, by working with Barclays’ network and presence in the market, we’re able to educate more businesses on our funding solutions, something which would take much more time if we were to do it on our own.”
Ian Rand, CEO of Barclays Business Bank, said: “This investment demonstrates our commitment to the partnership we announced last summer which offers hundreds of thousands of our SME clients access to even more innovative forms of finance, boosting cash flow and competition in the market.” Manuel Silva Martínez, Managing Partner and Head of Investments at Santander InnoVentures commented: “MarketInvoice is helping UK businesses access much needed funding to keep their businesses and ideas thriving in a very competitive market.”
Source: TechCrunch
