Swan, an emerging leader in embedded finance, announced it has secured a €37 million Series B investment round led by Lakestar, alongside reinvestment from Swan’s existing investors.
The funding will support the next stage of Swan’s continued internationalisation, which will include launches in the Netherlands in the coming months and Italy in early 2024. The company has already experienced fast growth across Europe, having opened offices in France, Spain and Germany in line with its hyper-localisation strategy. It now has over 100 customers with product coverage across 30 European countries and has processed over €7 billion worth of transactions. Swan’s headcount is expected to increase in the next two years to support this continued level of growth. This new funding round follows Swan’s €16 million Series A round led by Accel in 2021.
The investment will also see Swan double down on its strategy of addressing the enterprise market. Swan already works with large, multi-national organisations such as Carrefour, who completed a successful cashback project in the past year, and will deepen its enterprise capabilities by launching new product lines tailored for larger organisations. These include more payment collection methods like direct debit and card payments, as well as additional lending capabilities. The new product lines will also allow Swan to service new industries, like travel, insurance and B2B marketplaces, complementing the existing product suite that is already being leveraged by customers in 16 different sectors.
“Swan is on a mission to build the leading tech-driven bank in Europe. The simplicity and scalability of our BaaS technology is what drives our success,” said Nico Benady, CEO and Co-Founder at Swan. “The benefits we bring to our customers speak for themselves, with customers seeing up to 200% ROI on projects just three months post-launch, and others able to get up and running with a financial product in a matter of days. With Lakestar’s support, we can bring our technology and its benefits to businesses of all sizes, and in all sectors, as we continue to shape the future of financial services.”
In the years to come, companies of all sizes and sectors will benefit from embedded financial solutions, with 40% of financial services, in particular payments, expected to be delivered in this way. Overall, the embedded finance market is expected to reach $384.8 billion by 2029.
Lakestar prides itself on investing in visionary founders and championing the European tech ecosystem, in particular, by backing teams that have multinational, pan-European ambitions.
“I am delighted to be joining the board of a business that has so quickly established itself as a front-runner within the embedded finance space,” added Georgia Watson at Lakestar. “Businesses today are under increasing pressure to not only diversify their revenue streams, but also deliver financial products right at the point of user need. Swan makes this possible and shows immense potential to scale this offering across different markets and verticals.”
