Fintech Company Raisin Receives Unicorn Status After New Financial Injection

The fintech company Raisin has closed a new round of financing. Around €60 million was raised in a Series E round from two investors, according to the Berlin-based company. The Anglo-Saxon private equity specialist M&G Catalyst is taking the lion’s share of the sum as a new investor. The U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs as a former shareholder also participated again in the fintech.

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Raisin did not want to comment on the company’s valuation when asked by Gründerszene

However, “With a little pride in the current market environment, we can reveal this much: Our Unicorn status has been confirmed with the current Upround,” Raisin founder Frank Freund announced via email. Accordingly, the fintech company is now valued by investors at one billion dollars. To be sure, Raisin was traded as a unicorn at the latest after its merger with Hamburg-based competitor Deposit Solutions 2021

Last year, however, the status seemed temporarily gone again after Raisin investor Kinnevik valued the fintech in its books with “only” €895 million. Finanz-Szene had first reported on this. The industry portal justified the devaluation at the time with weak growth figures.

According to its own information, however, Raisin’s business is developing well. The fintech company has been profitable for half a year and has passed the mark of one million customers, it said. Raisin is a platform where private investors can compare various offers for overnight or fixed-term deposit accounts and invest their money abroad, where higher interest rates are often offered than in Germany. In addition, Raisin offers savings plans for index funds (ETFs) and investments in cryptocurrencies.

Criticism of lure offers from competitors

Freund, the founder of Raisin, does not see the fact that fintech companies such as Trade Republic and Scalable Capital are now advertising high-interest rates alongside many German banks as a problem. Many of these apparently attractive interest rates have restrictions on closer inspection. “In some cases, they only apply to new customers, only up to a certain investment amount or only over a few months. Often additional fees are then due, for example in the form of a paid premium membership. This then often eats up the attractive interest rates,” Freund argued. Such provisions are not found in Raisin’s overnight and fixed-term deposit accounts. In addition, his company is growing to a large extent in other European countries, in Great Britain and the USA, for example.

With the money from the new funding round, the fintech company now wants to develop new features that will “further lower the barriers to saving and investing with Raisin.” It also aims to further accelerate growth in expanding markets such as the U.S., where Raisin launched in 2020 and manages well over a billion euros in assets for customers. In total, the Berlin-based unicorn manages €38 billion.

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First published in GRÜNDERSZENE, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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