Businesses across Europe have reported vastly different experiences in their efforts to secure the financial support promised by their respective...
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. The EU announced last week that it would suspend the Growth and Stability Pact....
Penta is a German based fintech company that is looking to improve business banking with their Compass platform; Penta is streamlining the process to allow founders the ability to open up an account in less than 15 minutes; further features will be added in the coming months to assist founders with other registration and legal issues related to starting a small business. Source
Auxmoney is an online lending platform based in Germany; the platform grew origination volumes by 75% in the year to €316 million across 40,000 loans; the company now has lent around €700 million across 100,000 loans to date; last year auxmoney announced a partnership with digital bank N26 to expand their borrower base; auxmoney was profitable for the first time in the second half of 2017 which sets them apart from many platforms. Source
Target Global, based in Berlin has closed a new fund; the fund will focus on Seed and Series A rounds and expects to fund 20 companies primarily in Germany and Israel; Shmuel Chafets, General Partner at Target Global stated, “Target Global’s Early Stage Fund will serve as a bridge connecting Tel Aviv and Berlin. Germany in general and Berlin more specifically have been able to produce great companies, but if Berlin truly hopes to become a global tech hub it must open itself up to real innovations and groundbreaking technologies. On the other hand, If Israel wants to continue to be the “start up nation” , it has to create sustainable, long-term companies and efficient business processes. We already see some early signs of collaboration taking place, but we believe we can help expand it to other industries.” Source
In our latest guest post Jorrit van Rijswijk of Dynamic Credit digs into all of the European SME support programs...
This November we will host our fifth installment of LendIt Fintech Europe in London. Although London is most often referenced...
The company reported an increase in profits and sales last year which were helped by growth in the Nordics and Germany; Klarna processed €18bn in transactions last year which was an increase of 42%; the company partnered with Asos, Topshop and JD Sports in the UK to drive further growth; in the US they have partnered with Microsoft. Source
P2P-Banking reports that the bank ING Diba has acquired the marketplace lender Lendico; the company had challenges in Germany where it is based and also had shifted from consumer to SME Lending. Source
PayPal founder Peter Thiel, and his fund Valar Ventures, led a $10 million seed round in German insurtech startup Coya; other investors in the round include e.ventures and La Famiglia; Dr. Peter Hagen, one of the founders of Coya, tells Business Insider, "This investment will allow Coya to further extend our team and build up an exceptional product for our customers."; the company is planning to build a digital insurance provider and is in the process of trying to get full authorization from German regulators; founders of Coya include two former Kreditech employees and ex-CEO of Vienna Insurance Group. Source