Berlin — Berlin-based fintech company Banx­ware has raised €10 million in a seed expan­sion round led by Element Ventures. D4 Ventures, FinVC and Varen­gold Bank AG parti­ci­pate as co-inves­tors. All three VC firms have exten­sive port­fo­lios of fintech companies.

Banxware’s exis­ting inves­tors Force over Mass, VR Ventures and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) have signi­fi­cantly increased their invest­ments as part of this round. This also applies to the indus­try experts who have alre­ady inves­ted. They are Jan Kaniess and Carl Frede­ric Zitscher, foun­ders of Payone; Alex Urdea, former prin­ci­pal at Upper90, a New York City-based debt and equity fund; and Paula Blaz­quez Solano, part­ner and co-foun­der of Credo Capi­tal Part­ners. The current funding round is the second that the fintech company has under­ta­ken in 2021.

In the course of the finan­cing round, Banx­ware also restruc­tu­red its advi­sory board. New advi­sory board members from the inves­tor side are Mike McFag­den, Filip Coen, Timo Fleig and Jakob Schreyer. The chair­man­ship of the advi­sory board was filled by Chris­toph Bornschein.

Banx­ware will use the invest­ment to further deve­lop its embedded finan­cial services offe­ring, grow its team and expand product deve­lo­p­ment, sales and marke­ting to digi­tal plat­forms across Europe. In the last 12 months, Banx­ware has mana­ged to inte­grate its solu­tion with major plat­forms such as Penta, Takeaway.com (Lieferando) and Prestashop. In Q1 2022, Banx­ware will inte­grate embedded finan­cing solu­ti­ons with 3 leading payment service provi­ders and seve­ral other plat­forms in Germany, and plans to expand its reach to key Euro­pean markets.

Banxware’s tech­no­logy enables any company to offer embedded finan­cing products to SME custo­mers. Banx­ware thus crea­tes the link between banks, digi­tal plat­forms and merchants, all of whom bene­fit from Open Banking and the latest technologies.

Plat­forms: Plat­forms can enhance their current merchant offe­ring with reve­nue-based finan­cing products to streng­then both custo­mer loyalty and their own compe­ti­tive posi­tion in the market­place — all without compro­mi­sing their platform’s user inter­face. This will create an addi­tio­nal reve­nue stream, enab­ling the plat­form to offer more compe­ti­tive prices for its core products.

SMEs: SME custo­mers bene­fit from a fast, conve­ni­ent and fully digi­tal finan­cing appr­oval process that allows them to access finan­cing within minutes.

Banks: Banx­ware offers banks access to a new set of custo­mers and acce­le­ra­ted, digi­ti­zed risk assess­ment to digi­tize lending and target under­ser­ved and digi­tally savvy custo­mers that tradi­tio­nal banks would not other­wise reach.

Unlike other finan­cial solu­ti­ons on the market, Banx­ware stands out because of its fully digi­tal, embedded approach:

Last Decem­ber, Banx­ware laun­ched its first embedded product, a white-label SME finan­cing solu­tion that is fully inte­gra­ted into the look and feel of the plat­form and allows plat­forms to offer liqui­dity to their merchants based on future reve­nue. The finan­cing decis­ion is made in real time and the disbur­se­ment is imme­diate. For this product, Banx­ware secu­red an initial loan volume of 100 million euros from Verei­nigte Volks­bank Raiff­ei­sen­bank eG.

The foun­ding team
Banx­ware was foun­ded in Septem­ber 2020 by Miriam Wohlf­arth (photo from Banx­ware) and Jens Roehr­born, both of whom are well-known in the indus­try. Miriam Wohlf­arth is proba­bly the best-known 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 the Nets‑A/S group, employs over 300 people* and is fully profitable.

Jens Roehr­born, CEO of Banx­ware, is a lawyer with more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the payments and banking indus­try. Jens has been a board member and/or consul­tant at PPRO, Deut­sche Handels­bank, Order­bird, Stocard, Lieferando, Rails­bank and many others.

Toge­ther with Fabian Heiß, former Head of Busi­ness Unit at Finleap, Nico­las Kipp, ex-Chief Risk Offi­cer at Rate­pay and Diogo Simoes, former Head of Engi­nee­ring at Klarna, Banx­ware is well equip­ped to shape the future of finan­cing solutions.

About Element Ventures
Element Ventures is a global venture capi­tal fund that invests in B2B finan­cial tech­no­logy compa­nies. Element’s part­ners are proud to have supported some of the best foun­ders and compa­nies in the indus­try. Element’s mission is to support bold foun­ders who are deve­lo­ping the finan­cial tech­no­logy of tomorrow.

About Force over Mass
Force Over Mass Capi­tal is an FCA-regu­la­ted venture capi­tal firm focu­sed on early-stage tech­no­logy invest­ments in the UK and Europe. The company invests in B2B inno­va­tions in four verti­cals: Fintech, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, SaaS and Indus­try 4.0. Force Over Mass opera­tes both seed and scale-up funds to support early-stage compa­nies on their growth journey.

About VR Ventures
The venture capi­tal fund was estab­lished to drive inno­va­tion in the finan­cial indus­try. VR Ventures invests in early-stage start­ups in the Euro­pean FinTech and PropTech sectors, as well as in inno­va­tive digi­tal solu­ti­ons for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. Many of VR Ventures’ inves­tors are part of the Volks­ban­ken Group. VR Ventures lever­a­ges this unique network and exper­tise to support its port­fo­lio compa­nies beyond the finan­cial. The fund manage­ment of VR Ventures and the VC firm Reds­tone work toge­ther as one team.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.