After landing a first round of €3 million in 2019, finfrog, the French fintech that is disrupting the personal loan market, intensifies its development and announces raising €5 million from RAISE Ventures.
The costs linked to bank overdrafts are particularly costly in France, with more households going into the red due to the struggles associated with the COVID-9 pandemic. This is where finfrog comes in. By offering short-term micro-loans, which the startup states are 10 times cheaper than existing bank overdrafts, finfrog is a real responsible alternative. Since launching in 2016, finfrog has supported more than 60,000 customers.
The startup’s responsible approach to credit has succeeded in convincing large B2B players of its value. Finfrog already offers employees and self-employed workers through major partnerships signed with platforms such as Uber Eats, Frichti, Brigad but also Side, Iziwork and Gojob.
“With finfrog, we wanted to create a responsible alternative to bank overdrafts with accessible prices and grant criteria open to as many people as possible. The crisis we are going through now reminds us more than ever of the role we have to play in proposing alternative financing solutions,” explains Riadh Alimi, founder and CEO of finfrog.
finfrog will use the new funds from RAISE Ventures to continue its R&D work to develop proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms to model risk. Thanks to its proprietary machine learning algorithms, finfrog is able to lend to demographic groups like freelancers, temporary workers, and students, as well as to employees on permanent contracts.
Finfrog also intends to strengthen its product, by continuing to provide personalized budget support, notably by notifying customers when a bank overdraft is approaching to allow them to anticipate costs. It will also strengthen the speed of its offer, instantly unlocking funds, with a functionality which is today being tested in beta version with certain customers.
“We are delighted that an investment fund such as RAISE Ventures has recognized in finfrog its dimension of social utility. We will be able to accelerate in this direction, and get more French people out of bank overdrafts”, explains Riadh Alimi, founder and CEO of finfrog.
“The innovation brought to micro-credit by the different tools developed by finfrog creates a real responsible alternative to bank overdraft. The human and societal dimension of the model quickly convinced us, and moreover fully aligns with our convictions at RAISE. We are very happy to support the finfrog team in their ambitious development projects ”, commented François Collet, Partner of RAISE Ventures.
