ICYMI fintech funding round-up: Mistho, Plurall, Rupifi

At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) funding round-up for you to get the latest funding news.

Germany-based open payroll specialist Mistho has raised €3 million in a seed funding round.

The round was led by Lightbird, with other backers including Flash Ventures, Global Founders Capital, FinVC, Nauta Capital and well-known business angels.

The money will be invested primarily into further development of the product as well as the entry into several European markets, starting with UK and Germany, according to the start-up.

“Open payroll is a fundamental part of the open finance movement and we strongly believe that consumers have the fundamental right to share their financial data directly with third parties, regardless of the systems in which this data is stored today,” states Mistho co-founder and CEO Maximilian Czymoch.

“We are convinced that in the future, decisions about individual creditworthiness will in most cases be based on first-hand financial data and not by looking at the past.”

Founded in 2021 by Czymoch and Shervin Panahi, the company says it has already built a product that covers more than 70% of UK employees and can enable significantly faster and lower risk financial transactions for lenders, landlords, insurers and banks.

Plurall founding team

Plurall, a Colombian fintech focused on improving the financial inclusion of solopreneurs in Latin America, closed a pre-seed round of $1.5 million equity and $10 million debt.

Backed by domestic investors as well as those from the UK, US, Mexico and Spain, Plurall will launch its microbusiness-oriented services in April 2022.

“This is perhaps the first time in LatAm fintech, and one of the first times around the world, that a start-up is able to raise international institutional debt for originating its first loans,” comments Glenn Goldman, co-founder of Plurall.

“The typical path is to use expensive equity for the first year or two before being able to access an institutional debt facility.”

Plurall estimates that out of almost ten million microbusinesses in Colombia, only 1.6 million have some degree of financial inclusion. There’s a total $45 billion lending opportunity and $100 billion payments opportunity, in which incumbents are only serving 6%, the company estimates.

“In our first stage, we will provide working capital loans, together with a digital account, to provide these solopreneurs the attention they deserve as the heart and soul of the Colombian economy,” says Federico Gómez, co-founder and CEO of Plurall.

“As fast followers, we will incorporate a credit card and business-to-business (B2B) buy now, pay later (BNPL) feature to build an ecosystem that really fits their financial needs.”

Rupifi, which claims to be India’s first embedded finance company that operates in the B2B payments space through its BNPL and small and medium enterprise (SME) focused commercial card products, has secured $8 million venture debt.

Led by Alteria Capital, Trifecta Capital and Innoven Capital, this fundraise is an extension of a $25 million Series A round announced in January 2022.

“The focus on building end-to-end B2B payment solutions will enable us to expand beyond digital marketplaces and cater to the requirements of the traditional and mainstream B2B supply chains where the processes and transactions are still offline,” says Anubhav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Rupifi.

“Addressing the needs of the offline segments will help us take a step ahead towards our goal of disrupting the B2B payments and transactions ecosystem in India.”