French startup Swan raised $18.7 Million Series A funding round (16 millions) from Accel. The company offers a platform that allows customers to access banking services as a service.
For the past few years, embedded finance has been a major trend in fintech. This space allows companies to provide financial services for other businesses. These clients serve as a distributor for financial services, with the embedded finance firm acting as the backbone of all things finance.
So, even if they don't want to offer financial services, companies can still offer them. Other companies may specialize in API-based products which unlock new features for clients.
Swan partners with SaaS businesses, marketplaces, and other fintech startups to offer white-labeled banking services. Swans API can be used to create accounts and cards by calling API calls.
Today's round also included existing investors Creandum, Bpifrance and others. Swans clients include: Agicap and Alma, Fintecture and Mon Bel Appart. Pennylane and Ride are also included.
Account creation is made easy by the IBAN that each account has. Customers can access these accounts via a Swan-designed web banking portal. Swan clients have the option to create their own interface using Swans data.
Swan allows you to create both physical and virtual cards when it comes down to cards. They are compatible with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Customers can restrict certain features such as ATM withdrawals or let their customers manage their cards directly.
The startup is licensed to offer services in the European Economic Area and has an emoney license. It can also handle regulatory requirements such as identity verification or fraud detection. Swan customers don't have to deal with the regulatory requirements. Solving these problems is the main selling point.
The company will expand its operations to Germany through today's funding round. A new office is expected to open in the early 2022. Swan will be competing with Berlin-based bank-as-a service company Solarisbank. Swan plans to allow developers to access the APIs of the company directly through a self-service model.
We aim to offer banking features with local flavor for this funding round, specialized for many local EU markets: Ideal for the Netherlands, Ibans beginning with DE in Germany and Capital deposits accounts for France. Nicolas Benady, co-founder, CEO, stated in a statement.
Fintech is a booming vertical for startups, as you may have seen. Swan's B2B2C strategy means that it doesn't need to be a financial superapp to be the financial touchpoint for millions of people. Many people use Swan services every day without even realizing.
