Viva Wallet raises $ 80 mln

Viva Wallet, the Greek online payments company, has received financing of $ 80 mln. According to Techcrunch, the company will use money to expand its footprint and the services it offers, in particular expanding its Merchant Advance loans business.

Athens, Greece: 28 April 2021

Viva Wallet is the first European entirely cloud-based neobank using Microsoft Azure. It has branches in 23 European markets and plans to expand to Croatia, Hungary and Sweden.

According to Techcrunch, the investors in the latest round are:

Tencent, the Chinese technology company;
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD);
Beyer Capital

According to Techcrunch, Viva Wallet confirmed it is closing a large Series D round that will value it at € 1.5 bln.

Yianis Larios, Viva Wallet’s Vice President, noted that when Viva Wallet closed its Series C in the second half of 2019, it was valued at € 305 mln.

Haris Karonis, Founder and CEO of Viva Wallet said:

“We are excited to onboard Tencent, EBRD and Breyer Capital to Viva Wallet. We are confident that our investors’ extensive know-how and network of partnerships will accelerate Viva Wallet’s plan to unify the fragmented European payments market. The technology innovations that we are bringing forward to European merchants will help them to provide a frictionless, localized payment experience to all their clients, and liberate them from the hassle of maintaining legacy card terminals.”

According to Yiannis Larios, the startup has been profitable as of Q1 of this year and the business has grown by more than 40% in 2020, with 60,000 merchants active on its books. It is expected to reach 100,000 by the end of the year. He also said that:

“One reason for its success is that it has taken a very localised approach to growth, setting up operations with physical branches in each of the countries where it is active – somewhat of a retro idea in today’s market where banks are regularly shutting down their brick-and-mortar locations and going virtual. Viva Wallet is providing the resilience of its business model”.

Viva Wallet is planning to use its funding in part to build out its loans programme and to expand its point-of-sale Tap-On-Phone solution. This solution turns any Android device into a card terminal. It accepts both contactless and PIN payments without the need for separate hardware.

Yiannis Larios also mentioned that Viva Wallet is focusing on the SMEs of Europe, providing a pan-European payments solution which is much more localized to address merchants’ true local needs in terms of local payments acceptance, local IBAN accounts, local BIN business debit cards and etc.

Navigator Consulting provides Investment Advisory, Strategic Management and support for start-ups in Cyprus, Greece and internationally.