Scalapay, Southern Europe’s leading payment solution that enables customers to buy now and pay later (BNPL) without interest, today announced that it has raised $497M in Series B investment funding.
The fresh cash will fuel the startup’s plans to double its headcount by the end of the year, mainly with tech and engineering roles in Italy, and to finance potential acquisitions.
In another unusual case for Italian startups, Scalapay’s latest round was backed by an all-star group of foreign investors, seemingly unperturbed by BNPL stocks’ current turmoil.
“Despite all the valuations turning down in the public markets for BNPL, our investors were quite bullish because we were really able to hold through that period,” CEO and cofounder Simone Mancini tells Sifted.
So what did investors see in Scalapay that gave them confidence?
“When you look at BNPL across Europe, there’s only like one or two players that can do BNPL for the bigger brands — so in that regard, we don’t see much competition,” Mancini says.
Furthermore, while Scalapay doesn’t want to follow in Klarna and Afterpay’s footsteps by building out banking infrastructure for consumers. Instead, it intends to focus on building more checkout products for merchants.
Driven by its mission of empowering merchants to offer their customers amazing experiences, Scalapay has also launched a platform called Magic. The platform is designed to revolutionize the checkout experience for customers and solve the most painful areas for merchants wishing to provide a world-class e-commerce solution.
„There is an incredible opportunity for Magic to redefine European eCommerce, which has a lesser reputation compared to its US peers. With Magic, we have removed all the common friction points at checkout and addressed key reasons for cart abandonment such as signup or login, shipping, payment selection, and privacy consents. We have done this whilst respecting Europe’s strict PSD2 and GDPR rules,” says Johnny Mitrevski, Co-Founder, and CTO of Scalapay.
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Scalapay is an innovative payment solution for e-commerce merchants across the globe that allows customers to buy now and pay later, without interest. Their BNPL offerings include three options for customers (Pay in 3, Pay in 4, and Pay Later) in which customers are not required to make any payments upfront, and can instead opt to pay in 3 installments, 4 installments, or entirely after 14 days
Scalapay was founded by Simone Mancini and Johnny Mitrevski in 2019. The company has raised over $700M in funding to date.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
