Upvest closes EUR12m Series A+ round with additional financing from Earlybird

Submitted 10/12/2020 - 9:43am

Upvest, a Berlin-based startup offering the first plug-and-play pan-European securities API, has secured an additional EUR5 million in funding. 

The latest financing round was led by Earlybird and ensured the close of the Series A+. This additional funding follows an initial EUR7 million investment from Notion Capital, HV Capital and Partech. Upvest is also supported by fintech angel investors including Maximilian Tayenthal, founder of N26, Felix Haas founder of IDNow and Reiner Mauch, founder of Consorsbank.

Upvest’s Securities API is intended to transform the traditional, outdated and regulatory complex securities infrastructure. Designed as a simple gateway API that is easy to integrate into existing infrastructure, Upvest’s technology allows fintech organisations to develop and create investment products with greater flexibility and speed than ever before, while still adhering to European regulations.  

Upvest enables fintechs to offer investment products at scale across countries, allowing them to add assets and modules to their offerings. This increases value for users by providing access to a broad range of investment products (ETFs, equities, and commodities) and assets from both private and public markets. Besides commonly traded assets, Upvest helps transform illiquid assets, such as real estate, into liquid assets, while facilitating an 85 per cent reduction in cost over traditional solutions through its proprietary blockchain custody service. 

Leveraging this fresh funding, Upvest will incorporate a brokerage bank license (Wertpapierhandelsbank in German) into its offering, allowing an extension of its product into investment brokerage and traditional securities custody.

“After a decade of fintech UX innovation, the era of embedded finance and composable backend systems began. Upvest is at the forefront of opening up securities trading and custody further. By building a scalable and modular Securities API, we will enable fintechs all over Europe to launch investment products easily,” says Martin Kassing, CEO and Founder of Upvest.

Tim Rehder, Partner at Earlybird VC, adds: “An increasing demand from millennials for investment products, combined with negative interest rates, led fintechs of all kinds to prioritize their expansion into an investment platform. Upvest lets them focus on their core business while providing a simple plug-and-play solution for integrating securities into their products. What seems simple is in fact a complex infrastructure, disrupting established national players across Europe. We are particularly excited to support Martin and the team in their journey to create a new European category within B2B security infrastructure.”

In addition to having Bitwala and Exporo as customers who already use Upvest’s API to scale and generate EUR100 million-plus in transaction volume to-date, Upvest counts leaders from fintech giants Transferwise, Flatex, Raisin and Onfido among its team. Upvest plans to expand its team to 40 people by the end of 2020. As a regulated entity, Upvest is subject to the regulation and supervision of Germany’s BaFin. 

Tags Deals & Transactions Investments