Image credit: Modulr
UK and Ireland-based Modulr, a fintech startup that offers an embedded payments platform for digital businesses, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $108M (approximately €102.76M) in a Series C round of funding. The company has now raised a total funding of £150M (approximately €176.72M), to date.
Investors in this round
The round was led by global growth equity firm General Atlantic. The firm, with more than four decades of experience, provides capital and strategic support to over 445 growth companies throughout its history. Currently, General Atlantic has over $84B in assets under management.
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Aaron Goldman, MD and co-Head of Financial Services at General Atlantic, says, “Modulr has built a bridge between payments infrastructure and businesses who want to embed fintech into their products. Modulr enables clients to move money more efficiently, create accounts quicker, simplify processes and integrate what was historically thought of as ‘traditional financial’ services into their own product offerings.”
“The Company’s scalable, enterprise-grade architecture and seamless API have helped to establish its reputation and driven client wins spanning travel, accounting, payroll, challenger banking and vertical software across the UK and Europe,” adds Goldman.
Besides General Atlantic, the round also saw participation from existing investors, including Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, Highland Europe, and PayPal Ventures.
Move money efficiently to power business productivity
Founded in 2016 by Myles Stephenson, Modulr is a Payments-as-a-Service API platform for digital businesses that can integrate into any product or system. It enables digital businesses and software platforms across lending, banking, fintech, travel, employment services, and accounting to embed and build new payment products and services.
Modulr is authorised by the UK’s FCA, the Central Bank of Ireland, and the Dutch Central Bank as an Electronic Money Institution.
The company’s FinOps Hub enables 200+ clients to automate, control and embed payments, and is now processing an annualised transaction value of more than £100B. Some of its customers include Revolut, Wagestream, Sage, and BrightPay, and their millions of customers.
The FinOps Hub operates across a wide range of payment rails. It is real-time, open 24/7, and is simple to connect to via Modulr’s APIs – transforming the speed, flexibility, resilience, and cost of launching and operating embedded payments services, says the company.
Currently, the company has more than 300 ‘colleagues’ who provide services from offices in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Amsterdam.
Capital utilisation
Modulr says it will use the funds to accelerate its expansion in different geographies as well as extend its client and partner coverage in existing and new markets – the UK and Europe.
The funds will also help the company to further innovate the automation of real-time embedded payments, expand the use of Account-to-Account payments and Open Banking payments, as well as provide actionable data insights and broaden its suite of services.
Founder and CEO, Myles Stephenson, says, “Our ambition is to cement Modulr’s position as a leader in embedding financial technology into businesses across the UK and Europe. Our modern FinOps hub enables large enterprises, fintechs and digital businesses to build, scale, and control money flows. We believe the opportunity is vast and continues to grow with the rise of digital payments. This latest funding round will help support Modulr to become a pan-European payments champion. Our regulatory and licensing permissions, tech stack, and modern and dynamic service offering make it possible for our customers to automate and monetise payments.”
European expansion plan
This latest round of funding comes after the company opened offices in Amsterdam in September, 2021, as the springboard for its EU-wide expansion planned for 2022 and 2023. The company claims that the team in the Netherlands brings the expertise of not just real-time payments infrastructure to SEPA Instant, but also card issuing services and Open Banking propositions.
The expansion plan was carried out, last year, in key European markets, including Spain, France, and Germany. And in order to support the growth, Modulr also expanded its European team across a number of functions such as product, compliance, and business development.
In 2021, Modulr secured its electronic money institution (EMI) license from the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI). The company also became a directly connected participant of the Bacs scheme, alongside direct participation in the Faster Payments scheme, enabling it to settle and hold funds at the Bank of England.
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