Lakestar leads $13m series-A for Yapily

Alessia Argentieri
07 April 2020

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

Venture capital firm Lakestar has led a $13m series-A funding round for open banking API provider Yapily.

Previous backers HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and LocalGlobe also participated in the round, alongside angel investors including Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise chairman and co-founder); Ott Kaukver (Twilio chief technology officer); Roberto Nicastro (UniCredit former deputy CEO); and Frank Strauss (former CEO of Deutsche Postbank).

Yapily plans to use the fresh capital to consolidate its market position, further expand across Europe and develop new features for its platform and infrastructure.

Lakestar is a venture capital house with a presence in Berlin, Zurich and London. It recently held final closes for Lakestar III and Lakestar Growth I amounting to $735m. One third of the total capital raised was committed to Lakestar III, amounting to $245m, and two thirds to Lakestar Growth I, amounting to $490m.

Lakestar III provides early-stage investments in European technology startups, while Lakestar Growth I invests in later-stage venture rounds deploying up to €100m.

Lakestar's portfolio currently includes Opendoor, Glovo, Sennder, Eigen, FiveAI, Revolut and Hometogo, among others.

Previous funding
HV and LocalGlobe led a $5.4m seed round for Yapily in May 2019. Angel investors also participated in the round.

Company
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London, Yapily has developed an open banking application programming interface (API) to connect financial services providers and merchants to banks. Its platform helps retrieve financial data and initiate payments by providing one single API able to connect to each bank's separate interface.

The company is headquartered in London, with a presence in Italy, Ireland and France. It employs 45 staff and claims that its monthly recurring revenues have grown by 500% in the last six months. Its client base includes Moneyfarm, Intuit QuickBook, GoCardless and IBM.

People
Lakestar – Stephen Nundy (partner).
Yapily – Stefano Vaccino (founder, CEO).