Loan marketplace: Mintos tops £6m on Crowdcube- CEO Martins Sulte shares insight into Platform Operations
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Mintos is a marketplace for peer-to-peer lending that allows users to invest in loans granted from non-bank financial institutions (Loan Originators). Mintos specializes in consumer lending and facilitates loans both with and without buyback guarantee. Since their launch in 2015, Mintos has seen high growth rates and today they are one of the most popular choices for both new and experienced P2P investors. Mintos does not charge any fees to investors and makes most of its money on commissions they receive from lending platforms. Mintos operates a secondary marketplace where a 0.85% charge is assessed for selling a loan.
Outfund raises £37m in debt and equity
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Outfund’s mission is to bring the fastest, easiest funding solutions to high potential online companies across the UK. For the last few months, they have been building their product and funding our first companies. Outfund was launched out of personal experience. Their team is made up of former founders, startup vets and fintech specialists. They all experienced the stress and workload of VC raises and bank loans, as well as the pain of giving away a stake in their businesses. They knew businesses needed a better way to fund their growth: a simpler, faster and fairer way. A solution that turns fundraising from a full-time job into a low effort task and lets founders focus on growing their business. They use a funding revenue finance model and advance you a cash injection that can scale from £10k to £1m, based on the company’s needs. It’s not a loan and the company does give up any equity. The money raised can be used to grow for example expenditure on online ads, inventory, salespeople. The company repays the funds and a small flat fee with a share of revenue over a fixed period. The company can apply in in minutes, receive up to £1m growth funding in days, pay a flat fee with no equity dilution or personal guarantees. Therefore, the repayment occurs out of revenue earned. They specialize in online businesses in E-commerce, D2C online retail, subscriptions, B2B SaaS and Marketplaces.
They are working to grow the amount of capital they can deploy so they can deliver more and larger funding advances. They are also upgrading their product to give their customers more insights on how they can best use their funding.
https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/85353/outfund-raises-37m-in-debt-and-equity
London based Pigment raises £19.3m to help business with it next generation business planning platform
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Pigment is business forecasting platform and avoid the painful experience of using error-prone spreadsheets and inflexible software to forecast the future of a businesses. Instead of a rigid annual planning process, Pigment’s platform allows users to take control over their business data – presenting an intuitive, full-spectrum view of the company that allows users to play with multiple future scenarios in real-time through charts, simulations and continuous modeling.IN
London based fintech Updraft raises £16m to make credit cards redundant
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The Updraft app automatically connects to your existing bank accounts and credit cards using Open Banking APIs and then uses AI to send you alerts when you’re at risk of overspending on your account.If you do overspend, instead of your bank automatically giving you an overdraft, Updraft offers to replace your expensive overdraft with a lower interest loan thus reducing your interest costs. Updraft also offers a free credit report and credit score service, as well as tips on how you can improve your credit rating.
Pocket money app gohenry raises $40m for US push
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There’s an account for adults and linked accounts for your kids. All are easily managed online or through the mobile app. Your children get their own gohenry debit cards, which come with unique parental controls. Kids can only spend the money that’s on the card, so there’s no danger of debt or overdrawn accounts. You can open an account online in minutes and will receive your child’s card in 7 working days. You can make one-off transfers to motivate your children after having successfully completed certain tasks or set up an automatic weekly payment for their pocket money. You can also choose where the card can be used, as well as being able to block and unblock it whenever you need to. With tasks, savings goals and giving features that encourage good money habits, you can set your child up with financial proficiency that will carry through to adulthood.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/37112/pocket-money-app-gohenry-raises-40m-for-us-push
UK Fintech Pockit scoops £15m funding and cements partnership with Railsbank
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With the intention of supporting people who believe that they have been short-changed by their traditional banks, Pockit helps underserved and low-income U.K. customers manage their money with a bank account they can open in two to five minutes. Pockit offers its 500,000 customers a full U.K. bank account into which they can pay in their salary and government benefits, deposit cash at 30,000 PayPoint locations across the nation and are given a debit card to use for spending for 99p a month. Everything is managed through the Pockit app or their website, which its CEO explains is the core product that customers can use to send money to 35 countries.Pockit currently serves low-income earners across the country “unlike a lot of other fintechs which have large hubs in London, a large proportion of its customers are outside the UK. Around 25 percent are new arrivals to the country and the rest of their customers being U.K. nationals.