A2A payments firm Brite Payments gets $60m in fresh backing

Swedish account-to-account (A2A) payment pioneer Brite Payments has raised US$60m from investors to accelerate its instant bank payments throughout Europe.

The Stockholm-based company has attracted the backing of Dawn Capital – which was also an early investor in Swedish fintech success stories like iZettle and Tink. Dawn Capital is joined in this round by Headline and existing investor Incore.

Founded in 2019 by Lena Hackelöer, Brite Payments is one of the country’s fastest growing fintechs. It uses open banking to give businesses an out-of-the-box instant payments solution that allows customers to negate the usual middlemen, acquirers and processors involved in traditional money movement.

The fintech will use the money to accelerate its expansion throughout Europe and strengthen its presence in existing markets, as well as investing further in product development. In particular, it wants to double down on its instant payments network, called Brite IPN, which is the backbone of the company’s offering and enables 24/7 instant processing 365 days a year.

The funding comes on the back of a “breakout” year for Brite, which reached the coveted status of becoming profitable and enjoyed several other milestones to boot. During 2022, it more than doubled its transaction volume and revenue, meaning it’s now available in 25 countries across the continent. It connects with almost 4,000 different banks, touching more than 350m end-consumers – impressive scale for a startup that is barely four years old.

Investment amid ‘inflection point’ for A2A payments

Lena Hackelöer, Founder & CEO, Brite Payments, says: "We see account-to-account payments gaining momentum across Europe, but merchants are still struggling to realise the full potential for their businesses. That's why we've built a complete instant A2A payments and payouts offering that can be plugged into any checkout, while eliminating operational hassles such as settlement accounts, reconciliation or FX. 2022 was our breakthrough year, and with this funding round, we're ready to accelerate our growth and bring Brite to more markets and checkouts across Europe."

Josh Bell, General Partner at Dawn Capital, adds: “We are on the cusp of open banking 2.0. The prospect of real-time account-to-account payments becoming mainstream across Europe is on the horizon, and Brite stands to be the category leader. We’ve been on the ground in this space from the start, with early investments in Swedish fintech leaders including iZettle and Tink, and we believe Brite is on an equally stellar path.

“Lena is an extremely impressive CEO with first-rate domain knowledge and the all-round skills to build another market-leading global fintech from Europe. Deploying a driven bootstrap approach, Lena and her talented team have built a company with an impressive product and have rapidly reached profitability – a real feat for an early-stage open banking startup. We now can’t wait to help power Brite onto the world stage.”

Jonathan Userovici, General Partner and Fintech Practice Lead at Headline, believes companies like Brite are “rare” and insists that “open banking is at an inflection point. He calls the category “the main driver of competition in the finance industry”.

And Nicolai Chamizo, Partner at Incore Invest, believes Brite will go “from strength to strength” as open banking payments continue to gain acceptance. “It was a natural step for us to… deepen our commitment” to Brite, Chamizo says.

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