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Billie founders Matthias Knecht, Christian Grobe
Photo: THILO RÜCKEIS TSP / picture-alliance
The series of large financing rounds for young German financial technology companies (Fintechs) continues.
The Berlin fintech start-up Billie - specializing in debt financing - has collected 100 million dollars from old and new financiers and has thus achieved a mathematical valuation of 640 million dollars, about four times as much as before.
The group is led by the British venture capitalist Dawn Capital, which specializes in the financial sector.
The Chinese internet company Tencent, which in Germany already has a stake in the smartphone bank N26, is also investing in Billie.
Rocket Internet founder Oliver Samwer will also be there.
The entry of the Swedish fintech giant Klarna is of the greatest strategic importance.
The payment service provider has just announced a cooperation with Billie and is now underpinning this with a stake, initially in the single-digit percentage range.
Klarna is a leading provider of hire purchase and purchase on account when shopping online.
The model is also known as “buy-now-pay-later” and is viewed critically by consumer advocates, who warn that customers could get into a debt spiral by buying in installments.
Klarna has always rejected this allegation.
New access to a large customer base
While Klarna offers these services for private consumers, Billie wants to establish the same offer for business customers (B2B).
Since many Klarna partners, such as hardware stores, serve both private and corporate customers, Billie has access to a large customer base.
With the new money, the company wants to expand abroad and strengthen IT, risk management and fraud prevention.
So far, Billie has pre-financed transactions worth around one billion euros since it was founded, and the cooperation with Klarna is hoped for a leap in growth.
Billie's founders are Aiga Senftleben as well as Matthias Knecht and Christian Grobe, who founded the Zencap loan platform in 2014 and later sold it to competitor Funding Circle.
Venture capitalists recently invested hundreds of millions in fintechs like Billie, recently benefiting N26 and the Trade Republic trading platform.
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