Image credit: Pleo
Copenhagen-based fintech startup Pleo.io offers smart payment cards for employees to buy things they need for work while keeping the companies in control of spending. Today, the company announced that it has raised $150M (approx €126.7M) in its Series C round of funding – largest round raised by any Danish-founded company.
With this fundraise, Pleo has now achieved unicorn status with a current valuation of $1.7B (approx €1.43B).
Recently, the winners of the 2021 Future Hamburg Award were announced.
In May 2019, the fintech startup secured €50M in its Series B round led by New York-based Stripes and existing investors Kinnevik, Creandum and Founders Denmark. Prior to that, in 2018, the company had raised $16M in its Series A round to scale across Europe.
Investors in this round
This Series C round is co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital. In addition, existing investors, including Creandum, Kinnevik, Founders, Stripes, and Seedcamp have also invested in this round.
With this development, Bain Capital’s partner Keri Gohman will be joining Pleo’s board of directors. She has been named one of the most influential people in accounting and brings more than two decades of experience in the financial services industry.
Keri says, “The future of work empowers employees with the tools they need to be effective, productive, and successful. Pleo understands this critical shift for modern companies toward employee centricity—providing workers with a fun-to-use spend management app.”
How will the investment be utilised?
The raised capital from this round will help to scale up the company, its product offerings, and hire over 30 new talents.
Speaking on the development of the company, Jeppe Rindom, co-founder of Pleo says, “We’ll be building on our existing features and making them even stronger, as well as deepening our market-specific offerings. We can’t wait to get started – that’s why we already have. Just take a look at our recent revamps to our reimbursements functionality, Pleo Pocket.”
He also mentions that the funds will also be invested for market expansion, whether opening new geographies, or doubling down on the six markets it is currently operational in – “Offering truly local-first solutions so we can “win where we play”.”
What does Pleo offer?
The company was founded in 2015 by fintech veterans Jeppe Rindom and Niccolo Perra. Both were early members of startup success Tradeshift and both knew the pain of expense management.
Jeppe Rindom says, “Managing work-related spending has traditionally caused headaches for employees and their employers alike. Pleo is making the whole process simpler, quicker and more transparent.”
With its platform, the company wants to revolutionise business spending by reducing administrative complexity, eliminating expense reports, and simplifying bookkeeping. The company provides smart company cards paired with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending with detailed analytics in real-time.
The Pleo MasterCard is a prepaid card with flexible individual spending limits that can be charged up and handed out to employees, either physically or virtually. Moreover, the software can categorise spending automatically with each transaction as well.
Currently, the company has a team of more than 330 people working for their 15,000 clients, from offices across five European locations, including London, Stockholm, Berlin, Madrid, and Copenhagen.
How do Pleo cards work?
Pleo’s commercial cards are issued by Mastercard, and are accepted by more than 30 million merchants worldwide. The plastic Pleo cards can be used for in-store payments, contactless transactions and have a chip and pin facility. Meanwhile, Pleo virtual cards can be used to make online purchases. Besides, it can also be used in apps including ApplePay and Google Pay.
