Pliant, a Berlin, Germany-based business-to-business (B2B) credit card platform that allows businesses to optimize their payment processes, raised over €18m in Series A extension financing.
The round was led by PayPal Ventures. Existing investors SBI Investment, Motive Ventures, and Alstin Capital also participated.
The company intends to use the funds to further enhance its expansion into the UK and other markets outside the EU.
Led by CEO Malte Rau, Pliant provides a cards-as-a-service (CaaS) product that allows partner businesses to launch their own credit card programs to serve their customers, adding a new revenue stream and increasing customer retention. The product has seen success with its early partnerships with tech companies like Candis and mobilexpense, as well as with banks.
This financing follows solid performance in 2023, when the company more than doubled its annual revenues, with continued strong momentum in 2024. Pliant has passported its Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license to 25 countries across the European Economic Area (EEA), allowing the company to not only issue cards in these countries but also to provide additional financial products and services that serve the regional needs of their customers.
The company will continue to expand its go-to-market strategy and development with this product during 2024. Pliant will now pursue expansion outside the EU for the first time, starting with the UK. To facilitate its expansion, the company has developed multi-currency capabilities and can now offer its services in 11 currencies. This will allow customers to be billed in the same currency in which the transaction was paid, which is particularly useful for companies with significant transaction volumes in non-EUR currencies.
FinSMEs
18/04/2024