Banking-as-a-Service: the Fintech Company Swan Raises €16 Million from Accel

The acceleration of open banking and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) related financial services since the pandemic is no longer in doubt. 90% of large banks are considering providing open banking services to their business customers, and more than half (54%) of large banks hope open banking will help them increase revenue by up to 10%, according to a 2019 Accenture study.

Based on the same principle as open banking, Banking-as-a-Service solutions allow third parties to access the bank’s functionality, while open banking allows third parties to access the bank’s customer data. In order to accelerate the democratization of these services in Europe, the French FinTech Swan is raising $18.5 million (€16 million) in Series A from Accel, with the participation of historical investors Creandum and Bpifrance Digital Venture. It had already raised $5.8 million (€5 million) in September 2020.

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Swan was incubated at eFounders

Swan sees the light of day in 2019 under the leadership of Nicolas Benady, Nicolas Saison, and Mathieu Breton at eFounders. Apart from Swan, the startup studio has launched several FinTechs including Spendesk (SaaS solution for enterprise expense management), Upflow (platform for managing unpaid invoices), and Multis, before launching a program entirely dedicated to FinTech, Logic Founders, in January 2021.

Swan allows SaaS companies, marketplaces, and FinTech companies to integrate banking services into their offerings, such as creating bank accounts and providing Mastercard and IBAN. In concrete terms, the startup is developing a BaaS platform that allows developers to integrate banking functionalities on a white label basis. This model has attracted dozens of companies including Agicap, Alma, Expensya, Fintecture, Mon Bel Appart, and Pennylane.

Becoming a self-service platform

The startup, which has recorded more than $156 million (€135 million) in transactions on its platform, has reached a turning point in its history as it wants to become a self-service platform by the end of the year, to allow its customers to start their projects more independently. In this fast-growing sector, Swan faces strong competitors, such as the French FinTech Treezor, which has become a subsidiary of Société Générale since its takeover in 2019, the German Solarisbank or the American colossus Stripe, the best-valued startup in the United States and second in the world, after Bytedance.

Swan now has ambitions to expand in Europe, particularly in Germany, where the startup plans to open an office in early 2022. The fintech company also plans to triple its volume by recruiting 70 new talents (notably to strengthen its sales, marketing, and finance teams) to reach 100 people by June 2022.

“As each country has its own specificities, our ambition with this fundraising is to work on the development of local solutions, in order to perfectly serve all European markets: iDEAL in the Netherlands, German IBANs in Germany, capital deposit accounts in France, and many other features!”, comments Nicolas Benady

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(Featured image by Viacheslav Bublyk via Unsplash)

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