Berlin-based Fintech Banxware has raised EUR 4 Million in a seed round led by Force over Mass and VR Ventures. Both VC firms have extensive portfolios of Fintech companies.
Furthermore, severalFintech pioneers from the payments and SME lending space have joined the initiative, including:
HTGF, a public-private venture capital investment firm based in Bonn, Jan Kaniess and Carl Frederic Zitscher, the founders of Payone, Alex Urdea, Principal at Upper90, a New York City based debt and equity fund, CJ Lanktree, Partner at Solus Alternative Asset Management, a New York City based investment advisor, as well as Paula Blazquez Solano, Principal at Innocells, the venture arm of Banco Sabadell in Spain. This is the first external capital the fintech has raised.
Banxware will use the investment to develop and grow its embedded white label financial services offering and its team, as well as expand sales to digital platforms across Europe. Banxware will soon offer card-based products and other financial services, complementing its existing lending solution to business customers of platforms.
The future of banking is embedded: Embedded Financial Services bridges the gap between traditional banks and modern tech-driven platforms
Banxware’s technology enables any company to offer loans and other banking services to SME customers. Banxware thus creates the link between banks, digital platforms, and merchants and enables all parties to benefit from the latest state of the art technologies and open banking:
Banks: Banxware offers banks access to a new target audience as well as an accelerated,
digitalized risk assessment to digitize their loan origination.
Platforms: Platforms will be able to upsell their current offering to merchants with financial products in order to strengthen both customer retention and their own competitive position in the market without disruption of their platform UX.
Merchants: Merchants benefit from a fast, convenient and fully-digital credit approval process that allows them to get access to financing within 15 minutes.
Banxware expects a rise in demand for embedded financial services from platforms of all sizes and industries as well as big tech incumbents that want to become the center of their customers’ business.
Banxware is the first of its kind
In contrast to other financial solutions in the market, Banxware differentiates itself by its fully digital, embedded approach:
In December of last year, Banxware launched its first embedded product, a white label SME lending solution that is fully integrated in the platform’s look and feel and allows platforms to offer cash-advance loans based on future revenues to their merchants. The credit decision happens in real-time and pay-out happens immediately. For this product, Banxware secured a first EUR 100m loan facility from Vereinigte Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG,
Jens Roehrborn, Founder and CEO at Banxware:
“We are super proud that investors with such a deep experience in our core field of business are sharing our vision of how banking will look like in the future. We look forward to working closely with them on building the leading embedded financial services platform in Europe, maximizing all opportunities that modern technology and Open Banking are offering.”
Miriam Wohlfarth, Founder at Banxware:
“While traditional bank loans take up to three months and even the most innovative product-based finance up to five days, we were able to drastically reduce this time thanks to newest technologies and artificial intelligence. With us, platforms can offer loans, and within 15 minutes the customer has the money in the bank. This is a new record time which does not exist in the market so far.”
Filip Coen, Partner at Force Over Mass:
"We choseBanxware as we see great potential in embedded financial services for platforms. Banxware's mission, product and team stands out as it combines security with speed for its technology."
Timo Fleig, Managing Director VR Ventures:
"We have followed Banxware's development over the past months and were really impressed by the team's ability to successfully create and launch their platform in such a short time - and in such a challenging market environment. We look forward to driving Banxware's growth with our investment. We believe especially in the platform-embedded SME lending approach that will make Banxware superior in a competitive market."
The founder team - well-known faces from the German fintech scene
Banxware was founded in September 2020 by Miriam Wohlfarth and Jens Roehrborn, both well-known in the industry. Miriam Wohlfarth is probably the best-known female fintech founder in Germany. In 2009 she founded Ratepay, a leading payment provider for white label buy-now-pay-later solutions which is part of Nets A/S Group, has over 260 employees and is fully profitable.
CEO of Banxware, Jens Roehrborn is a qualified lawyer with over 20 years of experience in the payments and banking industry. Jens held board memberships and/or advisor roles at PPRO, Wirecard, DeutscheHandelsbank, Orderbird, Stocard, Lieferando, Railsbank and many others.
Together with Fabian Heiß, former Head of Business Unit at Finleap and Nicolas Kipp, Ratepay's Ex-Chief Risk Officer, Banxware is perfectly equipped to shape the future of banking.