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After receiving a second e-money licence from Ireland’s Central Bank and experiencing 500pc growth in 2018, Soldo was recently named the fourth most exciting start-up in the UK.
This morning (8 July), fintech start-up Soldo announced that it had raised $61m in Series B funding.
Founded in 2015 by Carlo Gualandri, Soldo was launched to allow businesses to manage company-wide spending from one easy-to-manage account. Administrators create cards for employees and departments, with custom spending limits and rules to allow businesses to proactively manage costs.
Soldo’s prepaid Mastercards and its accompanying user app enables transaction data to be recorded at the point of purchase, and all data integrates seamlessly with business accounting softwares such as Xero, Quickbooks, Concur, Expensify, NetSuite, Zucchetti and SAP.
Soldo’s services are available to businesses of all sizes, from microbusinesses and SMEs to companies with thousands of employees.
The $61m investment in Soldo was led by Battery Ventures and Dawn Capital, with participation from Accel and Connect Ventures. This latest investment brings total funding to $82m.
Soldo’s Series B round is the largest to date for a financial technology company in the spend management space.
While Soldo is based in London, it currently employs 10 people in Ireland, and founder Gualandri told The Irish Times that, by the end of 2019, more than 50pc of the business will be led from Dublin. The company has its sights set on the European market, where there is a potential reach of 20m businesses.
Recently, Soldo was listed as number four on Startup.co.uk’s list of 100 of the UK’s most exciting start-ups, following 500pc growth in 2018 and the procurement of a second e-money licence from Ireland’s Central Bank in addition to the e-money licence it secured in the UK.
Soldo said of this achievement, “This makes us Brexit-ready for all of our European customers and is testament to the company’s proactive forward planning, as it takes nearly two years to get the prestigious Irish e-money licence.”
Upon announcing the funding news this morning, Gualandri said the company still has a long way to go before it accomplishes its goals: “I’m very proud of the team’s achievements over the past 12 months, but we have barely scratched the surface of the opportunity ahead of us.
“There are over 3m businesses in our target markets, the UK and Italy, and over 5.5m businesses in the next three largest markets in Europe. Most of these businesses are still using reimbursable expenses, spreadsheets and manual processes to manage the expense management cycle.
“The time saving and additional control over company spending and expense management that Soldo offers businesses of all sizes is a true game-changer, and we will continue to accelerate growth and consolidate our position as market leaders in the UK, Italy and Ireland over the next 12 months.”
Itzik Parnafes, a general partner from Battery Ventures, believes Soldo is essential in today’s world: “With more employees now empowered to incur business expenses, and more expense-management processes moving to the cloud, today’s corporate-expense programmes must adapt to keep up – in Europe as well as the US.”
Soldo said that it will use the $61m investment to scale into new European markets, while doubling the company’s existing workforce over the next 12 months.
