Image credit: Ngrave
The startup ecosystem in the Benelux region – The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg is thriving. The region’s business ecosystem has been improving drastically in terms of both growth and capital investment.
Over the last few years, startups in the Benelux region have seen increased attention from VCs. According to European Startups data, Benelux startups have already recorded €961.2M in investment so far in 2022, and raised €6.2B in 2021 and €2.7B in 2020, a constant year-on-year growth.
These are the women in science of the Amsterdam startup ecosystem.
The term ‘fintech’ is described as the technological solutions developed in various financial services areas, such as online banking, mobile payments, and cryptocurrency, that consumers use in their daily life. Startups catering to this service segment are also growing in the region.
Here are a few fintech startups in the Benelux region that have raised funding this year as sourced from Dealroom.
Actyv
Founder(s): Raghunath Subramanian, Ramkumar Thirumurthi, Raghu Venkat
Founded in: 2019
Total funding: $5M
Actyv is an AI-powered enterprise SaaS platform with BNPL for B2B embedded. It is used by large enterprises to transform their supply chains and to empower their supply chain partners.
Enterprises can scout for partners via the platform and appoint/onboard them digitally. During the onboarding process, Actyv.ai checks for errors and frauds in the partner’s documents and then analyses the data extracted to create the partner’s Financial Health Report and Actyv Score. Based on these, the partner gets access to closed-loop bank credit – BNPL for B2B – which it can use as working capital.
Insify
Founder(s): Koen Thijssen
Founded in: 2020
Total funding: $16.5M
Insify aims to transform business insurance by making it simpler, faster, and more affordable for entrepreneurs and SMEs. The company has developed an intuitive end-to-end digital customer journey, offering SMEs a business insurance quote in as little as two minutes.
Leveraging data analytics, Insify ensures that coverage is tailored and individually priced for each business. The Dutch startup develops proprietary and tailored insurance products spanning business liability and professional indemnity to occupational disability cover for entrepreneurs and small businesses across various sectors, backed by an insurance company, Munich Re.
Businesses can insure with Insify through direct online signup, embedded partnerships with e-commerce and fintech platforms, and via brokers. The company is already protecting more than 1,500 small businesses in its home market, the Netherlands.
Waow
Founder(s): Jan Harboort
Founded in: 2017
Total funding: $4.4M
WAOW wants to have a positive impact on the payment market and specialises in direct and small payments for the local merchant.
Reports say that the team of MPS (Mobile Payment Solutions), led by serial entrepreneur Jan Harboort, has been quietly working in recent years on WAOW, a green payment terminal that gives consumers a 2 per cent discount on their purchase. KV Oostende is WAOW’s first major customer.
Buddy Payment
Founder(s): Camiel Kuiper, Marco van Etten, Ralph Oudshoorn
Founded in: 2018
Total funding: $2.4M
Buddy Payment is an internet banking application created to help people with their banking affairs. The company has developed the Buddy app to support vulnerable Dutch people with their financial affairs and thus prevent debts.
The Buddy app was developed in collaboration with professionals from municipalities, credit banks, and debt counselling organisations.
Municipalities use the app as a scalable prevention tool in their fight against the growing debt problem. Reportedly, in the Netherlands, nearly 2 million households are at risk of increasing debt and 600,000 households have problem debts. Only one in three households with problematic debts is in a debt counselling programme of the municipality. For this reason, dozens of municipalities, including Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague, work with the platform.
EMAsphere
Founder(s): Hugues Vandepeutte
Founded in: 2015
Total funding: $16.2M
EMAsphere is a SaaS solution designed for CFOs wanting up-to-date reliable financial and operational data and analytics. The company’s platform offers assistance in accounting and operational information and connects to specific systems and excel sheets. This enables businesses to access online dashboards that are updated daily to show the progress towards key performance indicators.
EMAsphere has developed 60 accounting and operational connectors, which helps retrieve company data. It also has more than 50 preconfigured representations, graphs and visuals and allows users to customise the display.
Aividens
Founder(s): Edouard Beauvois, Nicolas Mertens
Founded in: 2018
Total funding: $1.7M
Aividens is the developer of a credit risk management platform that helps companies reduce their bad debts and improve their cash flows. To do this, the company’s platform uses specific algorithms and artificial intelligence.
The fintech not only makes it possible to assess the condition of a company’s customers’ and prospects’ receivables portfolios in real-time, but also predicts their future state enabling them to make the right decision and set the right priorities for the short and medium-term.
Onramper
Founder(s): Thijs Maas, Salah Abdelbaki, Maurits Dewina, Albert Acebrón
Founded in: 2020
Total funding: $6M
Onramper aims to bridge the world of fiat and cryptocurrency by providing a gateway aggregator. As an aggregator, it provides access to all fiat gateways in one widget, which is free to use and fast to integrate. Moreover, Web 3.0 companies can build their flow through Onramper’s ‘robust yet simple’ API, reducing many months of work to mere hours.
Through Onramper’s infrastructure, businesses and users are able to get instant access to more than 150 cryptocurrencies across 180+ countries and 20+ payment methods. The company claims that it has achieved 100 per cent Compound Monthly Growth Rate (CMGR) with over 400 fully onboarded clients and a new B2B2C live solution.
Moneytrans
Founder(s): Francisco Sanchez-Apellaniz, Jeremy DeSmet (current CEO)
Founded in: 2002
Total funding: $12.1M
Moneytrans is a cross-border payment company that serves migrants and claims to offer “the cheapest and most convenient way to transfer money, whether it’s to support family members or to pay for services overseas.” Besides money transfer, the company also offers services such as FX solutions, bill payment, prepaid cards, mobile top-ups, and customised payment accounts in IBAN format associated with a debit card.
Moneytrans has served nearly 10 million customers, helping them send or receive money through digital mechanisms or a European retail network of 3000+ branches that are then in turn linked to over 500,000+ payout locations in over 140+ countries worldwide.
Secfi
Founder(s): Frederik Mijnhardt, Wouter Witvoet (currently serving as Chairman)
Founded in: 2017
Total funding: $707M
Secfi was founded after the founders realised they couldn’t afford to own stock options in a company they worked tirelessly to build. They quickly discovered that they weren’t alone. So, they launched Secfi to help their startup peers understand and make the most of their equity. The company now provides equity planning and financing for startup employees and claims to be trusted by thousands.
Besides, Secfi also provides company-wide education for startups to help their team make the best decision for their own situation, and also provides one-on-one guidance with licensed equity strategists and a set of financing products, enabling employees to own a stake in the company they helped build.
Ngrave
Founder(s): Edouard Vanham, Ruben Merre, Xavier Hendrickx
Founded in: 2018
Total funding: $6.5M
Ngrave is a digital asset security provider that offers security solutions for blockchain and crypto use cases. The company claims that its flagship product – crypto hardware wallet “NGRAVE ZERO” – is the only financial product in the world that features the highest security certification: EAL7.
The company has partnered with the world’s top tier in nano and chip technology, cryptography and hardware security, and counts among its advisors several blockchain pioneers such as Jean-Jacques Quisquater, famous cryptography professor and second reference of the bitcoin paper.
Cake
Founder(s): Davy Kestens, Tom Claus, Jessica Ruelens, Pieter Schelfhout, Yves Bovin, Peter Van Hees
Founded in: 2018
Total funding: $11.7M
Cake wants to add value to companies, banks and consumers by generating new revenue streams through processing financial transactions. The company’s app analyses spending habits and notify about different bank charges, enabling customers to improve their financial well-being and manage their finances.
For businesses, the app can help attract new customers and reward existing ones with targeted cashback discounts – market insights based on financial transactions help them choose the right strategic direction. As for banks, they are given the opportunity to offer an additional service to their customers, increasing customer loyalty while developing an additional revenue stream.
Tokeny
Founder(s): Luc Falempin
Founded in: 2017
Total funding: $11M
Tokeny claims to allow financial actors operating in private markets to compliantly and seamlessly issue, transfer, and manage securities using distributed ledger technology, enabling them to improve asset liquidity.
Due to disconnected and siloed services that are currently used to enforce trust, private markets experience poor asset transferability with little to no liquidity. By applying trust, compliance, and control on a hyper-efficient infrastructure, Tokeny enables market participants to unlock advancements in the transferability and liquidity of financial instruments.
D2X Group
Founder(s): Theodore Rozencwajg, Laetitia Grimaud, Don van der Krogt
Founded in: 2020
Total funding: $5.5M
D2X Group aims to provide financial institutions with a capital-efficient and clean exposure to the asset class while mitigating operational and regulatory risks. It offers a plug-and-play solution with a robust risk management model and a reliable trading interface.
According to the company, crypto regulation is currently very fragmented in Europe. Hence, D2X adopts a regulatory-first approach and aligns with the existing EU regulatory framework. In the near future, D2X will leverage upcoming crypto regulations to further extend its offering.
Fintech Files Powered by AWS
In the new section Fintech Files, in collaboration with AWS, we are keeping tabs (pun intended) on the thriving fintech industry in the Benelux. Want to learn more about the benefits of the cloud, or talk to one of their experts? Visit AWS Startup Loft to register for the latest events, get free 1:1 support from AWS experts and discover more resources. Build and scale your (fintech) startup with $1,000 in AWS Activate credits, free tools, technical support and training to quickly get started with AWS. Learn more about AWS Startup Loft.
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