Led · Series B · Jun 2022

Bud provides an end-to-end Open Banking and data intelligence platform that aggregates and categorises financial data to deliver customer insight. Clients use Bud’s technology to enhance onboarding, boost engagement and loyalty, and offer personal financial management services. Its aggregation and categorisation capabilities support lending use cases including income and employment verification, affordability assessments, and ongoing transaction monitoring. Headquartered in the UK, Bud's AI has processed over 2.5 billion transactions and enriched 1 billion transactions. The company aims to expand its Open Banking offering, increase financial inclusion, and help consumers access affordable and appropriate lending products. Bud is partnering with TransUnion to combine data intelligence and global insights and to develop next-generation credit, affordability, and fraud solutions. Bud Financial provides an AI-based open banking platform used by large banks and others to power lending, payments and personalized financial products. Its technology focuses on transaction enrichment, categorization, merchant recognition and income verification, with claims of 33% higher accuracy and over 93% accuracy in a recent market test. The company processes features that often end in payments via open banking APIs and emphasizes insights to differentiate from competitors. Bud pivoted from a consumer-facing app to a B2B model in 2017 to work directly with financial institutions. It is live in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand and plans to expand to two more countries this year. Bud is not disclosing customer or transaction numbers, revenues, or its valuation with this round. Bud offers a technology platform that enables banks to create new apps and services by intelligently connecting bank account data to third-party fintechs and financial providers. Launched in 2016 as a consumer aggregation app, the company pivoted to a bank-facing platform to help banks compete in the Open Banking/PSD2 era. Its product includes data enrichment features such as Smart Balance, Goals, and an advanced regular payment finder, and it uses transactional data to detect patterns and behaviors to trigger partner services. Bud works with roughly 85 fintech and financial services partners and counts HSBC-owned First Direct among its customers. The company is collaborating with the UK government on a Rent Recognition Challenge to help people build credit history from rent payments. Bud has 62 employees and says the new capital will support doubling its headcount and expanding its Open Banking-focused team. Bud is a London-based banking app and website that aggregates and links financial services from banks, fintechs, and other industry players. Its platform connects products including bank accounts, credit, pensions, investments, FX and more. Partners include WiseAlpha, Goji, Growth Street, Trussle – 30mins, Scalable Capital, Transfermate, and Assetz Capital. The company raised £1.5m in funding to support growth. Bud is using the funds to expand operations, hire new people, and continue to develop the platform. Founded in 2015 by Ed Maslaveckas and George Dunning, the company focuses on integrating a broad set of financial services into a single interface.

Led · Equity · Apr 2022

Jaja Finance is a London-based, digital mobile-first credit card lender founded in 2015 by Per Elvebakk, Jostein Svendsen and Kyrre Riksen. The company offers consumer credit via credit cards and aims to become a major player in the UK credit card market. It will use new funding to fuel growth and to drive the transformation of consumer credit. Jaja plans a substantial recruitment push, targeting a 40% uplift in product, data science, software development, engineering and IT teams before the end of 2022. Original investors, including AG Silverstripe, continue to retain significant holdings. The firm previously worked with KKR to fund its £530 million acquisition of the Bank of Ireland’s British credit card portfolio. Jaja offers digital and physical credit cards through a mobile-first app that uses camera-based ID capture and an AI algorithm for near-instant credit decisions. The company issues Visa-branded cards, supports digital wallets immediately, and advertises no foreign-exchange fees, free cash withdrawals and an APR of 18.9%. Jaja has commercial partnerships including Asda/George.com and will become the consumer credit card issuer for Bank of Ireland UK and the AA under the announced deal. The startup has been intentionally onboarding slowly and reported a waitlist of about 6,000 people prior to launch; it is active only in the UK. Financially, Jaja previously raised about $16 million (including ~£3 million via Seedrs) and is now receiving a new equity injection alongside the acquisition transaction. The company is not disclosing a valuation or current usage metrics beyond the waitlist figure. Jaja Finance is developing a mobile-only credit card product and has begun onboarding users from its waiting list to trial the service. The company intends to use recent funding to launch its credit card offering and expand hiring at its London office, targeting 45 in-house staff by the end of 2019. Jaja says it will pursue a full banking licence in the future but is currently focused on the credit sector. It has pursued partnership and white-label deals to create additional revenue streams alongside its own product. The startup previously trialled its technology in stealth mode in a retail environment to work out bugs before a broader rollout.

Led · Equity · Feb 2020

Globalization Partners operates an employment platform that simplifies remote team building and enables companies to hire anyone, anywhere, within minutes. Led by CEO and Founder Nicole Sahin and President Bob Cahill, the company serves an active customer base including CoinDesk, TaylorMade and Chime. It reports approximately $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and maintains a partnership network that includes ADP TotalSource, Kruze Consulting, Global Chamber and London & Partners. The company raised $200M in funding that valued it at $4.2 billion in a round led by Vista Credit Partners. Globalization Partners said it will use the funds to expand its share of the $176 billion global remote employment market. The company is based in Boston, MA. Globalization Partners provides a platform that enables companies to hire talent in more than 170 countries by placing the worker on a locally compliant payroll, removing the need for customers to navigate complex international legal, tax, and HR issues. Founded in 2012 by CEO Nicole Sahin, the company is based in Boston and San Diego and maintains regional hubs in the UK, Germany, the UAE, India, Shanghai, Singapore, Brazil, and Mexico. Its core product functions as an employer-of-record service: companies identify the talent and Globalization Partners puts that team member on their locally compliant payroll. The company closed a $150M minority equity investment in 2020. It intends to use the funds to invest in client services, technology development, sales, and global expansion. No operating metrics such as revenue or user counts were disclosed in the announcement.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2018

Expensya is a Paris-based automated spend management solution founded in 2014 by Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani. Its platform handles expense reports, general expenses, online purchases, daily commute and employee benefits to free workers from day-to-day administrative tasks. The solution is used by over 5,000 companies across approximately 100 countries. The company reported 100% growth over the past year. Expensya currently employs around 140 people and plans to add over 100 new hires across three years. The fresh funding is intended to accelerate R&D efforts and support the planned headcount expansion. Expensya develops and supplies a cloud-based expense management software that integrates AI and machine-learning technologies, including OCR and intelligent recognition. The solution is used by more than 4,000 companies in over 60 countries and supports eight languages. Expensya processes over €20 million of expenses each week and says it reduces expense report processing time by 80%. The company employs nearly 60 people and recorded 200% growth in 2018, driven by entry of large accounts and strategic partnerships. Expensya plans to strengthen R&D, add new features, expand its sales force, and accelerate international deployment to further disrupt competitors in the expense management market.