Where should the everyday investor start?
One option that is growing in popularity is app investing. With an estimated 3.2 million users across the UK’s top 10 investment apps, it is evident that the number of people looking to invest for their future is only growing. However, still being new territory for many, exactly how accessible are investment apps for beginners?
What are the risks and what should new investors know before committing their hard-earned money?
Historically, investing has been associated as something for the wealthy, with many believing it requires detailed knowledge about stocks and other investments such as cryptocurrency or precious metals. In fact, the research showed that 50% of people are being put off investing due to a lack of knowledge and confidence. But app investing is challenging that stereotype, with the hope of encouraging more to try it out.
With minimal fees involved and the option to invest small amounts at a time, fintech apps are making investing a viable option for all. Using a well-designed platform, everyday investors can begin to grow their wealth from the touch of a smartphone. In-app discussion creates a sense of community, by allowing fellow users to share their insights, experiences, and opinions with one another, giving beginners vital knowledge about the fundamentals of investing.
To encourage users to view app investing as a feasible option, many apps are also offering free trials, giving investors the chance to experiment with practice accounts. In addition to providing an insight into how the platforms work, this can offer users a low-risk opportunity to build their confidence by learning how to manage a portfolio and make trades, before involving real money.
While app investing offers a number of benefits, users must ensure proper research is carried out. An understanding of the service is paramount in mitigating risks. Before involving money, users should look at the credibility of the app they are interested in and other important information such as its founder credentials and app regulations, as well as past reviews, both from users and the industry. This can help provide a clear picture of the positives and negatives of each app, allowing the user to make an informed decision about which platform can best support their financial goals.
In addition to background information, users should also be aware of any fees and the service included within this price. Being knowledgeable around this is crucial, particularly for beginners investing smaller sums, where fees may eat into any returns. New users should begin by looking at the terms and conditions of the app to understand what they are signing up for. For example, delays between requesting cash and it being received can often be overlooked, which can affect overall return, so users need to know where they stand.
When starting to invest, people should look to spread their money in multiple smaller amounts rather than one large sum, to help spread the risk. Looking at personal finances and only investing what is affordable is critical to managing money effectively and avoiding any financial difficulties down the line. Individuals must be disciplined and rational; markets can go up and down, so it’s important to avoid reacting quickly to market volatility.
With more people beginning to download and use investment apps, what does the future look like for fintech?
One thing is for certain, it’s showing no signs of stopping. AI is already being used for trading bots, meaning users can expect to see the role of AI increase and diversify across platforms in the future. In addition, apps that round up total spends and invest the difference when online shopping continue to emerge in the market, allowing people to make savings that adapt with their spending habits.
While the future of app investment looks to be a prosperous one, with more users comes tighter regulation. More stringent checks during onboarding are to be expected, to assess individuals’ affordability and investment competence, preventing financial fallout. App investing is an innovative solution that enables users to continue to find new and adventurous ways to manage their money and explore everything from stocks and shares and cryptocurrency, right through to precious metals such as silver and gold.
About the author: Hamzah Almasyabi is CEO at MintedTM, an investment platform that allows individuals to buy and sell precious metals.
On Tuesday, Stripe, which supports businesses in accepting online payments, said it had agreed to a strategic partnership with Klarna to offer its “buy now, pay later” payment method to Stripe’s merchants. Koen Koppen, Klarna’s chief technology officer, said, “Together with Stripe, we will be a true growth partner for our retailers of all sizes, allowing them to maximize their entrepreneurial success through our joint services.”
Stripe says that the agreement will make it easier for retailers to add Klarna as a payment option on their website. Klarna usually partners with retailers directly to embed its checkout button on their sites. However, the agreement with Stripe could give Klarna a much wider client reach. The Swedish fintech generates revenue through deals with retailers, which pay it a small cut on each transaction processed via its platform.
According to Stripe, early results reveal that merchants experienced a 27% increase in sales on average after integrating with Klarna. The average order value, meanwhile, increased by 41%.
Critics of “buy now, pay later” platforms have accused companies such as Klarna of encouraging customers — often people who are young or on lower incomes — to spend money on items they cannot realistically afford. In the UK, the government has introduced proposals to regulate the industry in order to protect consumers from potential financial harm.
The sale was priced at 815p per share, representing a 4% discount on Thursday’s closing price. Hinrikus sold around 10 million Class A shares in the company, which debuted on the London Stock Exchange in July.
Wise has said that it understands Hinrikus intends to use the proceeds from the sale and loan to invest in European tech startups. However, Hinrikus’ private investment firm will maintain a hold of its 54 million class B shares in the company.
Earlier in the week, Wise revealed a growth in second-quarter revenue driven by higher customer numbers, partly attracted by lower prices. Wise said that nearly 4 million customers transferred approximately £18 billion over the period. This is an impressive 36% increase from 2020.
While Wise expects its take rate for the second half to be somewhat lower than in the first half, it nonetheless anticipates revenue growth for the year to March 2022 to be in the low to mid 20% range over the previous year.
The changes include a “pay now” or “buy now” option which will allow Klarna users to pay for items in full right away. The introduction of this new feature follows criticism that the use of “buy now, pay later” services encourages people into debt.
Klarna, like similar services, offers its users the opportunity to delay or spread the cost of a purchase without being charged interest or fees. This is especially appealing to young and low-income shoppers who may have a harder time meeting the repayment. Critics of the platform also say that people are bombarded with messages and adverts urging them to use the “pay now, pay later” service without there being a straightforward explanation of how the service works and what it involves.
Klarna says that its new feature, as well as other changes, will give customers greater control and clarity. The company also said that it would be performing more thorough checks on how much users can realistically afford to borrow and will begin to use clearer language during the checkout process to protect users.
While it is a new introduction for the UK, Klarna’s “pay now” option already exists for customers in several other countries.
The company has recently announced that it’s intending to hire hundreds of new staff members in a bid to undergo significant expansion into Europe alongside its IPO. “We’ve always had European origins as a firm, but they’re becoming increasingly important,” said Matt Henderson, Stripe’s business head for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Stripe’s expansion into Europe has been steadily gathering momentum over the past year, the company began hiring new engineers for its London office in 2020 and expects this momentum to continue into the future as Stripe sets its sights on global growth upon going public.
As part of its IPO preparations, Stripe’s London office is set to focus largely on growing non-financial company offerings, like bank integrations such as transfers and open banking. In fact, in the coming weeks, engineers will begin testing a “pay-by-bank” integration to the payments network.
With such activity bubbling under the surface, it’s perhaps no surprise that Stripe has reportedly entered into early discussions with investment banks about the prospect of going public in 2022. The 11-year-old payments provider is said to be considering an initial public offering, but may even opt for a direct listing - although plans were subject to change.
Image: The Strategy Story
As 2021’s most valuable private firm in the US, weighing in at a seismic valuation of $95 billion, the prospect of a Stripe IPO would undoubtedly cause a stir to say the least. Should the favourable market conditions that we’ve become accustomed to this year continue into 2022, an initial public offering for the payment giants may return record-breaking results. But what would a Stripe IPO look like? Let’s take a look at what the future has in store for the wildly successful fintech startup.
What A Stripe IPO Could Look Like
With an estimated value of almost $100 billion, a debut would mean that Stripe overtakes fellow fintech Coinbase’s direct listing in April 2021 at a value of $86 billion. Like Coinbase, Stripe may decide to avoid launching an IPO entirely, opting for a direct listing instead. This would mean that investors will need to wait until the stock arrives on its chosen market on its first day of trading, which is likely to be the NASDAQ at the time of writing.
The company has reportedly already begun the preparatory process of going public by hiring law firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as a legal advisor on the early stages of their preparations. However, there’s still very little that we can know in terms of absolutes as to when, where and how a Stripe stock is set to arrive.
Can Stripe’s fundamentals support a mega IPO? Well, the company raised $950 million through VC funding in 2019 and 2020 alone - with a $600 million round arriving in 2020 during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company itself experiences sizeable growth during this period due to the rise of online shopping and electronic payments. With a further $600 million raised in 2021, Stripe’s revenues had reportedly climbed to $1.6 billion in 2020, with a workforce 4,000 strong at the time.
As for competition, Stripe has industry giants like PayPal and Square to compete with. With a market cap of $305 billion at the time of writing, PayPal is a formidable competitor for Stripe - and one that may yet stifle the fintech’s expansion efforts. But amidst a rapidly growing fintech market, there’s likely to be room for both entities to comfortably co-exist to the point where this shouldn’t hinder a prospective Stripe IPO.
Capitalising On A Prosperous Fintech IPO Market
Image: Digital Insurer
The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the fintech industry. Digital transformation brought with it a widespread trend towards more online shopping and electronic payments - which has helped to aid the sustained growth of countless emerging fintech firms.
As the data above shows, it took just seven months in 2021 to overtake the global VC-backed deal activity for fintechs in the entirety of any of the five years prior. This illustrates the seismic growth that is sweeping through the industry. Although this indicates that growth is occurring for Stripe’s direct competitors in the industry, it also opens the door for more advanced collaborations across the fintech landscape.
We can see evidence of emerging technologies in the field of decentralised finance and borderless payments that can collaborate with fintech institutions to deliver more advanced products. In the case of emerging companies like Connectum, we can see an example of a VC-backed platform that has the ability to deliver borderless financial services through multi-currency processing, one-click payments and 3D secure, AI-powered transactions to send money globally in a frictionless way.
Image: FX Street
As the table above illustrates, global fintech M&A and IPO activity are also on the rise - indicating that the industry is maturing at an unprecedented rate. With 10 and 11 IPOs arriving in Q4 of 2020 and Q1 of 2021 respectively, it’s clear that the fintech industry is booming at present.
This shows that the prospect of a Stripe debut is likely to be a significantly popular one across the market. Should momentum continue to build from 2021 into 2022, Stripe’s debut, regardless of whether it’s an IPO or direct listing, is certain to be a key contender for the biggest of the year - and a real statement of intent for the wider world of fintech.
In August, news broke that PayPal was exploring the possibility of creating a stock trading platform. This marks a considerable inroad towards retail investment, having rolled out the ability for customers to trade cryptocurrencies last year.
The company has even hired brokerage industry veteran Rich Hagen as part of the move - who has reportedly become CEO of a previously unreported division of PayPal called Invest at PayPal.
Image by Nasdaq
As the chart above shows, PayPal’s potential foray into the world of retail investing may have been sparked by significant growth in the user base of online brokerages throughout 2020. While the pandemic may have aided new customers in making their first trades through stimulus packages and the free time afforded by social isolation measures, it’s also worth noting that brokerages have become far more popular since adopting zero-commission payment for order flow operating models.
So far, 2021 appears to be telling a similar story in terms of mass retail investor growth around the world, and experts believe that PayPal is eager to tap into this rise in adoption.
“The surge in retail investing, as well as the knowledge that more than 10 million new investors entered the market in the first half of 2021, are driving PayPal's interest in this industry,” explains Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at Freedom Finance Europe. “PayPal wants to ride this wave while also keeping up with the competition. Since then, Robinhood Markets, Inc. has grown to over 22.5 million net accounts by the conclusion of the second quarter of the 2021 fiscal year, an increase of 129.6% year over year.
Meanwhile, Square, Inc., PayPal's main competitor in the payment processing sector, has already incorporated features to its Cash App payment service that make it easier to trade equities and cryptocurrencies. And this is a major milestone in the evolution of the PayPal ecosystem. PayPal is a well-known brand that handles 22% of all online transactions in the United States and has a high degree of consumer trust. These criteria indicate that if it enters the retail investment market, it will be rewarded with a more extensive user base.”
PayPal’s Industry Muscle
PayPal will be aiming to leverage its industry muscle to compete with established online brokerages like Robinhood. Today the payments giant is responsible for leveraging 22% of online transactions in the US, while also retaining a relatively high level of consumer trust along the way.
Image by Insider
With such significantly high total payment volumes around the world, PayPal could feasibly enter the market as the largest brokerage on the planet, with some 400 million customers already in place worldwide.
PayPal’s global reach may also help on its path to prominence, with the possibility of accessing markets that the likes of Robinhood haven’t yet accessed, due to Robinhood only being available for US-based customers at the time of writing. However, some market commentators have expressed their fears that, although PayPal boasts a significant global user base, it may be too late for a party that’s been building throughout 2020.
Late To The Party?
Despite its huge volume of users, PayPal may still run into trouble winning over retail investors for their new service - particularly in the US where Robinhood has already performed exceptionally well in months.
In conversation with Motley Fool’s Industry Focus host Jason Moser, financial planner, Matthew Frankel expressed his bafflement that PayPal had taken so long to push forward with plans to launch their own online retail brokerage.
“My other adjacent thought to that is, are they late to the party? Has everyone else already scooped up that? Stock trading exploded in the middle of 2020,” Frankel added, noting that in missing the pandemic investment gold rush, PayPal may find itself at a disadvantage in winning over users who may have already acquainted themselves with other brokerages.
Image by CB Insights
As the data above shows, Robinhood’s monthly active users swelled to 20 million in the early months of 2021 - owing to the sheer volume of coverage that the platform received in the wake of the Gamestop short squeeze. The trading app has now become synonymous with meme stocks and although its reputation has taken knocks from many Wall Street stalwarts like Warren Buffett, it didn’t stop Robinhood from going public in the summer of 2021 and attaining a sizeable market cap of around $35 billion at the time of writing.
However, PayPal is far longer in the tooth than Robinhood and the company’s market cap of $316 billion shows that it certainly has the resources to make a success of whatever new concentration it turns its hand to. Winning over Robinhood’s network of retail investors may be one thing, but PayPal certainly has the ability to mount enough of a campaign to woo new users.
Regulatory Hurdles
However, a bigger hurdle may be lurking around the corner in the form of the regulatory boundaries that PayPal will need to navigate. If PayPal wants to create its own brokerage subsidiary, regulatory approval will need to take at least eight months to complete. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has already made it clear that it’s concerned about the level of ‘gamification’ taking place in the retail investing market of late - and the arrival of new key players may compound those fears.
Ultimately, the unease of the SEC may cause the required approvals to take longer, while the commission has also made it clear that it’s considering imposing a ban on the popular payment for order flow investing models that have helped to bolster the revenue of Robinhood and many other industry leaders.
Should PayPal opt to create its own retail investing tool, it will be entering an industry that is perhaps at its most volatile stage. However, with an ever-growing base of active users, PayPal is aware that it’s tapping into an industry that’s become extremely popular in recent months. With the right navigation, the payment giants may be able to hurdle its uncertainty and make a big splash in the ever-popular retail investing landscape.
Wise’s new investments feature, called Assets, allows customers to invest in BlackRock’s iShares World Equity Index Fund which tracks a basket of over 1,500 of the globe’s largest public companies. The fund’s holdings include Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet.
Users will also have the option to instantly spend up to 97% of the invested funds in their accounts via a Wise debit card and send money overseas. The idea behind this is that customers can hold their money in stocks but are also able to spend and send the funds in real-time.
Wise’s CEO and co-founder Kristo Käärmann said: “Holding money in various currencies can be hard to manage efficiently. Assets is seeking to solve that problem, by providing an opportunity for customers to earn a return on their money with us, in a host of different currencies, all in one place.”
Wise explained that it is keeping back 3% of users’ invested funds as a buffer in case of any significant fluctuations in the market and to prevent users’ balances from dropping into negative territory.
Wise has currently launched Assets personal and business for customers in the United Kingdom but plans to roll the product out to Europe in the future.
The problem is, it can be quite hard for small businesses to get external funds since most traditional lenders are reluctant to invest in them. Because, unlike large companies, they don’t have the equity and resources to compete in the market. But thanks to the emergence of fintech or financial technology in the last decade. With fintech developments, small businesses have more opportunities to scale up and thrive by making financing from lenders more available to them.
Trustworthy lenders can help you with this matter. To further understand its impact, find out below how it expands the financing options of small business owners.
Develop New Approaches For Credit Analysis
Most conventional lenders like banks and credit unions heavily rely on the old credit scoring system when making lending decisions. As a result, small businesses with a limited or no credit history find it too difficult to get loan approval. But fintech has made it possible to expand credit availability by developing new approaches in assessing creditworthiness.
Through machine learning technologies, lenders have a pool of data to support their decision-making. Factors like financial situation, spending habits, and professional background are analysed by the machine to come up with the applicant’s behavioural profile. This gives small business owners more chances to prove their creditworthiness towards the lender.
Simplify Loan Application Process
Small businesses are often viewed by banks and credit unions as risky borrowers. It’s one of the main reasons why they usually require multiple in-person interactions before approving their loan. Plus most of them used manual and paper-based loan approval that normally takes several weeks and even months.
On most occasions, such a lengthy process results in a low approval percentage for small business loan applications. Fortunately, fintech provides easy-to-use online applications, allowing small business owners to apply for loans at their convenience and get faster approval. With rapid loan underwriting, small businesses can navigate and understand their financing options much better.
Provide Credit Directly
Drawn-out application processes and high fees have held back many small businesses from securing short-term loans. Such limitations are impacting the cash flow of thousands of companies. But the need of small business owners to access fast credit is largely recognised by fintech.
With fintech’s advanced loan origination software, online lenders that offer quick cash loans, bad credit payday loans, emergency loans, etc. don't only improve their credit assessments but the process of their loan disbursal as well. They can already provide loans to small business owners using direct money transfers and enforce repayment terms through an online platform.
Create Alternative Forms Of Financing
The fintech industry has undoubtedly provided multiple ways for small business owners to grow and expand. With better automation, speed, precision, and the possibility of lower interest rates, it brings various lending solutions to small businesses and even startups. Below are some alternative forms of financing they have created.
Peer-To-Peer (P2P) Lending
P2P lending is a painless way to get financing with quick disbursals and easy repayment methods. Through automated algorithm-based pricing and underwriting, P2P lending platforms screen all types of borrowers more accurately and match them with the most suitable lender. So even with shorter credit histories and lower scores, small businesses can secure financing.
Invoice Factoring
With accrued late payments, the working capital of small businesses might take a hit. But fintech has made a way to invoice financing technologies to help increase the liquidity of companies suffering from late-payment problems. With a web-based portal, small business owners can get advances from an invoice finance company. They can upload their invoices in real-time and have the amount deposited in their bank account.
Merchant Cash Advance
Small businesses can also get an advanced lump sum of money based on their future credit card sales. They can repay the advance by taking a fixed percentage of those sales until the whole amount is paid back in full. With fintech streamlining the process of credit assessments and setting up dynamic repayment schedules, small businesses can keep their margins and profits still intact.
CrowdFunding
With fintech innovation, multiple crowdfunding platforms allow entrepreneurs to fund their small businesses through a variety of people who want to get involved with their business campaigns. Depending on the type of crowdfunding, small businesses may have to repay the fund or compensate in the form of equity. But besides raising funds, the best part about crowdfunding platforms is giving entrepreneurs opportunities to reach out to potential customers.
Leverage Fintech Innovation To Grow Your Business
Fintech development doesn’t solely make outside financing more accessible to small businesses. It can also help you manage all your financial needs and transactions more efficiently from online lending to accounting and invoicing. You can have an edge over your competitors by leveraging fintech innovation in your daily business transactions and operations.
Dima Kats, CEO of Clear Junction, explains what open banking is and why businesses should care.
Open banking breaks down traditional barriers in the financial sector that kept customer data locked up. For years, the only way businesses and consumers could view financial data like transaction histories was through paper statements or web forms. The lucky ones may have been able to access data in PDFs, or perhaps as downloadable files for specific desktop programs. For most customers though, that put restrictions on how they could use that data. Open banking changed everything. It puts businesses and consumers back in control of their data, allowing them to grant direct access to third-party companies via application programming interfaces (APIs) operated by their banks.
Open banking needs data
Data access is important for fintech companies that want to enhance their own services, such as fast loan approvals or budgeting applications. An online budgeting service could use customers' transaction data to show them summaries of where they spend their money, helping them to plan their finances more effectively. Fintech also includes elements of artificial intelligence (AI), typically in the form of machine learning. The combination of access to larger amounts of financial data and the power of AI will enable businesses and consumers to glean new insights from banking services.
Initial access to that data has been difficult in the US, but on 9 July 2021, the Biden administration took a big step to support open banking's quest for data by introducing an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy. The Order contained a series of measures covering issues ranging from the right to repair through to non-compete clauses. Among them was a request for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to consider new rules that would mandate portability for financial data. This move didn't happen in a vacuum. The CFPB had already issued non-binding guidance on open banking in 2017, followed by an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking last October that would give open banking principles regulatory teeth. Nevertheless, the Executive Order brings even more momentum to this issue.
Embracing competition
Hard rules on data portability will have a significant impact on a US banking market that has seen an erosion of competition in the last few decades, with nine in ten banks closing since 1985. Gaining access to their data will give consumers and businesses more power to switch financial institutions. It will also spark a whole new wave of innovative competition. Smaller challenger banks in the US will be able to offer services using customers’ banking data.
Ushering in a new era of open banking in the US will also encourage cooperative relationships between incumbent and new financial players. Soon, consumers and businesses will be able to make their financial data available to fintech players who can use it to offer cutting-edge services at speed and scale, often in partnership with incumbent banks or with each other. Fintech companies will be able to use APIs to exchange data with banks directly so that they can complement each others' services and provide seamless user experiences.
The Executive Order was also a clear sign that this administration wants to keep laws and regulations in sync with new technological developments. This is encouraging, as it gives more certainty to new and rapidly evolving areas of the economy. Clear rules stipulating data sharing will encourage fintech companies to invest in more exciting services.
Spreading open banking through responsible regulation
This development in the US will hopefully also stimulate competition abroad, where open banking concepts are in various stages of development. In Europe, version 2 of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) took effect in 2018, imposing similar data portability rules. The results have been impressive. In the UK, 2.5 million UK consumers and businesses now use open banking-enabled products to handle their finances, according to the UK government's Competition and Markets Authority.
With the call for open banking now coming from the highest levels of leadership in the US, it's time other countries around the world align themselves with similar regulations that will encourage competition and partnerships in the financial sector. This will boost the customer experience with new and innovative services. It takes joined-up thinking to create a new era of joined-up services.
On Thursday, Revolut announced it had raised $800 million (£579 million) from new investors Tiger Global Management and Japanese Investment group SoftBank. The deal boosted the London-based fintech’s worth to $33 billion (£24 billion). This is a huge increase from last year when Revolut was valued at $5.5 billion. The announcement comes nearly a month after Revolut revealed losses of £207.8 million despite the fintech cashing in big on the cryptocurrency boom.
Revolut was founded by Nik Storonsky, former Lehman Brothers trader, in 2015. The banking app initially focused on offering free currency exchange to customers but has since expanded to over thirty different countries. Revolut now offers business accounts, investments, and wage advances. Although Revolut holds an EU banking licence, it is yet to receive approval in the UK.
On Wednesday, British money transfer business Wise was valued at around £8 billion in a direct listing in London, steering clear of the blows that have lately hit tech businesses such as Deliveroo. Wise saw trading in its shares settle at £8.00 by the latter half of the morning, reaching as high as £8.27 as official trading began.
The fintech business joined the London Stock Exchange via a direct listing, a typically unusual listing route that saw Wise’s shares posted for trading on the index without a reference price. The debut price was settled via a long-drawn-out early opening auction. By 11:20 am, over 43 million shares worth £350 million had changed hands.
The positive start to trading means that Wise is London’s biggest float of the year and the capital’s largest ever tech listing. The fintech business has been profitable since 2017. This year, its sale hit £421 million, with the app moving £54.4 billion across borders for 6 million customers. Before this most recent valuation, Wise was valued at between £5 billion and £6 billion in April.
Wise’s stock market debut has been described as a triumph for British fintech.
Copenhagen-based company card start-up Pleo has raised $150 million in a financing round, which was led by Thrive Capital and Bain Capital Ventures. Pleo has said that the round, which is now the largest Series C for Danish startups, has led to the company being valued at $1.7 billion.
Pleo, which sells corporate expense management software and linked smart payments cards, has increased its valuation to $1.7 billion following a $150 million financing round, led by Thrive Capital and Bain Capital Ventures. Following its recent valuation, Pleo is now the latest European fintech firm to reach “unicorn” status.
Around 70% of Pleo’s profit comes from interchange fees from merchant bank accounts, subtracted each time a customer uses their card. Paid subscriptions are Pleo’s second largest form of revenue. The start-up has said that the coronavirus pandemic has served as an accelerator for its business model. Over the course of 2020, Pleo’s customer base doubled to 17,000 as an increase in remote working offset a decline in international business travel.
Pleo’s founders were previously employed by Tradeshift, a $1.1 billion fintech company that relocated from Copenhagen to San Francisco. Moving forward, Pleo’s founders plan to use fresh funds to increase the company’s presence in countries like the United Kingdom and boost marketing and PR.
