London fintech firm secures £18.9m to develop digital transaction banking platform

A London fintech company has announced that it has secured £18.9m in growth capital to help develop its platform.

Modulr, a digital alternative to commercial and wholesale transaction banking, will use the funding to develop its product and service offering, with the introduction of card issuing and deeper European payment capabilities, and to expand further into new market.

The funding round was led by Highland Europe, a European Growth Capital firm, with participation from existing investors including scale-up specialists Frog Capital and venture builders, Blenheim Chalcot.

The new growth investment takes Modulr’s total funding received to £53.3m and delivers on its commitment to match the £10m it was awarded from the Capability and Innovation Fund in August.

Modulr, which has been built in partnership with Blenheim Chalcot, has also opened its first non-UK office in Dublin, to begin expansion into the European market.

Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr, commented: “In the past year, we’ve experienced strong growth, we’ve gained direct access to key payments infrastructure and have positioned ourselves as a trusted payments partner for some of the most ambitious companies in the UK and beyond.

“With Highland Europe, we have a partner which can help to further fuel this momentum, investing in our infrastructure and product suite to ensure we can provide our customers with a reliable service that’s easy to access and simple to use.

“This is important, particularly in the face of this tougher business landscape.

“With this new investment we’re ensuring customers’ payments infrastructure can continue to work seamlessly in the background, so they have one less thing to worry about.”

Laurence Garrett of Highland Europe added: “No-one can deny the opportunity of the business payments market, some five times the size of the opportunity presented by consumer payments, and Modulr is the leading platform in this space.

“We were impressed with its strong operational resilience and its proven history of sustained stable growth within the growing B2B payments industry.

“Myles and the team have firmly established the fintech as the go-to provider of payments services for ambitious businesses, and we look forward to fuelling this growth further.”

Mike Reid, senior partner at Frog Capital, said: “Modulr is a breath of fresh air in the enormous corporate payments industry, bringing clients a major step change in efficiency, flexibility and transparency delivered through their market leading technology.

“This, together with their direct Bank of England access, marks them out as one of stand-out European FinTech infrastructure players.”