Denmark-based fintech Pleo, a business spending platform based on smart company cards, today announces a new collaboration with J.P. Morgan and Mastercard. The collaboration will allow Pleo to offer its customers a variety of new features such as corporate credit cards and scale faster across Europe.
Pleo, founded in 2015, offers smart payment cards for employees, enabling them to buy the things they need for work, all while keeping the companies in control of spending. Its solution revolutionises business spending by reducing administrative complexity, eliminating expense reports and simplifying bookkeeping.
As a result of the collaboration, J.P. Morgan is providing an API solution that allows Pleo to manage its cash positions more efficiently and to process customer payments in real-time. Furthermore, Pleo will move from prepaid smart company cards to next-gen credit cards, as well as securing an e-money license in Denmark to serve credit to their key clients across Europe. These changes will allow Pleo to expand into new European territories faster, the first being Spain and Ireland in 2020, with four new markets expected by the end of the year.
Jeppe Rindom, CEO and co-Founder of Pleo said: “We are growing up as a company to better serve Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), as well as larger companies. Collaborating with J.P. Morgan and Mastercard will enable us to scale our revolutionary technology faster across Europe and help us move from our initial version of a product – the prepaid card – to something much more scalable for the future and more widely accepted – corporate credit cards.”
“We have delivered a real-time banking experience for Pleo, powered by APIs,” says Tristan Attenborough, M.D. in EMEA Wholesale Payments at J.P. Morgan. “The technology and our co-development approach means Pleo is now better placed to serve European SMEs and help them manage their expenses through a powerful combination of automatic liquidity management, real-time payments and multicurrency credit cards.”
“At Mastercard, we’re excited to be closely partnering with Pleo bringing their new corporate credit card offering to the European market. SMEs of all sizes will be able to benefit from the Mastercard worldwide acceptance network and Pleo’s advanced business technology to make company spending easier and more transparent,” adds Scott Abrahams, Senior Vice President, Business Development and Fintech at Mastercard.
In May 2019, Pleo raised a €50.7 million Series B financing round led by Stripes, a leading New York-based growth fund, with participation from existing investors, Kinnevik, Creandum and Founders. The round brings the total amount raised by the company to €71.6 million.