By
Steve Muchoki
March 12th, 2024
The funding round is a big plus for the fintech startup, TrueLayer, and at the same time, it acts as a vote of confidence since Stripe is backing TrueLayer, even though Stripe is TrueLayer’s competitor.
TrueLayer, a fintech startup based in London, revealed that it had raised $130M from Stripe, a payments firm, and Tiger Global Management, an investment firm. The amount was raised after TrueLayer’s valuation amounted to $1B.
TrueLayer, the company that raised $70M earlier in the year (April) has experienced monthly payment volume growth of 400% in 2021 thanks to its expansion across activities in Europe coupled with the doubling of the company’s customer base. Founded 5 years ago, 2016, TrueLayer is among the startups that are keen on taking advantage of the open banking rules in the UK and Europe.
The rules favor these startups as they require lenders to share data with other companies in order to come up with tailor made products meant to suit their clients. In an interview, Francesco Simoneschi, the chief executive at TrueLayer, revealed that the company currently has operations in 14 countries across Europe, and is looking forward to introducing its services in Australia in the near future. TrueLayer, whose customers include Cazoo and Revolut, accounts for more than 50% of the total of open banking traffic in three countries; Spain, UK, and Ireland. While it’s ordinary for most fintech firms to target the US market to fuel their growth, TrueLayer revealed that it has no immediate plan of entering the US market. Simoneschi was quoted saying that he thought that the US market presents its share of challenges which the company isn’t ready to tackle or deal with at the moment. With the backing of Stripe and Tiger Global, the Fintech company, TrueLayer, intends to become the future of open banking payment.
TrueLayer’s funding round has been propelled by the recent increased demand for open banking by investors. Startups in the open banking niche have also welcomed increased demand for prolific acquisitions. Some of the prolific acquisitions include a deal between Visa and Tink, Tink being TrueLayer’s rival. The other acquisition is the purchase of Aii by Mastercard. These prolific acquisitions have resulted in increased competition in Europe’s open banking payments. TrueLayer is now up against more experienced and established players like Plaid, an American giant valued at $13B.
The funding round is a big plus for the fintech startup, TrueLayer, and at the same time, it acts as a vote of confidence since Stripe is backing TrueLayer, even though Stripe is TrueLayer’s competitor on “Pay by Bank Integration”. While there’s no deal between the two firms at the moment, reliable sources have it that TrueLayer might become Stripe’s go-to open banking payment option. When asked why the startup went for another funding round and yet they had another one to the time of $70M in July, the CEO, Francesco, answered that the offer presented by Tiger Global was irresistible. The CEO further added that their vision is to make open banking payment a very ubiquitous platform of payment not only in the developed countries and continents like the UK and Europe but to also make it available in the whole world.