GoCardless joins the Unicorns

La FinTech britannique GoCardless, spécialisée dans la dématérialisation et la simplification des paiements récurrents par prélèvement automatique, vient d'accéder au statut très convoité de Licorne. Un nouveau tour de table consolide son modèle et ses ambitions d'accélérer sa croissance dans l'open banking.

FACTS

• Gocarless has joined the ranks of British technology unicorns after raising $312 million in a Series G round.

• Gocarless' backers include new high-profile investors such as Permira and BlackRock.

• This new round of funding also brings the FinTech to a valuation of $2.1 billion.

• This financing will allow GoCardless to accelerate its growth in the field of Open Banking, boosting the internationalisation of its offer.

CHALLENGES

• A promising start: GoCardless announced its intention to launch a hybrid payment solution based on Open Banking in January 2021. The following April, it signed up its first customer in the ISP sector, Cuckoo. Since then, GoCardless has multiplied its partnerships with FinTechs such as Pennylane, PayPal and Klarna to ensure the widest possible distribution of its offer.

• Competing with the biggest payment players: GoCardless' new investments should enable it to further strengthen its account-to-account payment services and build a global payment network capable of competing with card networks.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• GoCardless now processes more than $25 billion in transactions per year and serves more than 70,000 businesses worldwide. This figure and its new status as a Unicorn are a clear indication of the relevance of its strategy.

• Its agile and responsive FinTech model has enabled it to quickly establish itself in a market of the future. Other global initiatives are also seeking to present themselves as alternatives to current payment networks. In Europe, for example, EPI is still seeking to rally around its objective of interoperability.