TrueLayer, a London-based fintech startup founded in 2016 by Italian entrepreneurs Francesco Simoneschi (ceo) and Luca Martinetti (cto), announced this morning a new 7.5 investment round led by UK venture capital firm Northzone (see here the press release).
This new round comes after a one million dollar seed round in Febraury 2017 by Connect Ventures and another 3 million dollar round in July last year by Anthemis, the UK venture cpaital firm focused on fintech investments which had signed a 200 million euros coinvestment agreement with Italy’s Unicredit in 2016 (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Northzone, who has a track record of succesful investments in startup companies such as Spotify, Zopa, MarketInvoice and Lastminute.com, was joined in the round by both Connect and Anthemis.
TrueLayer structures the so-called APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) or IT interfaces the allow fintech startups to develop apps and services based on data gathered from bank accounts as the Second EU Payments Directive (PSD2) allows. PSD2 actually states the entry in the open banking era and allows corporates and retail clients to access new information and payment services provided by third parties, who have been previously authorized and registred by national supervisory authorities in EU (see here the video of Caffé di BeBeez of last October 2017 and a previous post byBeBeez).
TrueLayer will use the investment to expand across Europe, starting with Germany and France. Additionally, TrueLayer will substantially grow its team and develop new products to help companies and consumers make the most of Open Banking and PSD2. SInce last year coo Shefali Roy joined the team as coo. She is well-known in the sector ad she used to work as chief commercial officer in Apple and in Stripe. Since last January True Layer has been signing partnerships with many companies such as Monzo, Starling Bank, Zopa, ClearScore, Canopy, Plum, BitBond, Emma, Anorak e CreditLadder.
