UK FinTech Bourn has announced a £3.5 funding round.
The fundraise includes a strategic investment by NatWest Group, alongside support from McPike Global Family Office, Haatch, Love Ventures, Portfolio Ventures and aperture.co.
The latest £3.5m fundraise follows a £1.5m seed funding round earlier this year, which was led by Haatch.
Bourn was founded in 2024 by Nick Tracey, Roger Vincent and Paul Gambrell to transform SME finance landscape with its flexible trade account (FTA)
Co-founder Roger Vincent said: “This builds on a brilliant first year piloting our solution with Investec, all focused on reinventing the business overdraft for SMEs.
“What’s super exciting is what this represents: two of the UK’s most respected banks backing a different, real problem-solving approach to flexible business finance.
“For the last 20 years, banks have been pulling away from business overdrafts.
“They went from 30 per cent of SME working capital down to about 5 per cent.
“And it’s understandable – unsecured lending is capital intensive, the fraud risk is real, and the operational overhead is significant.
“But that left millions of businesses stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Either go to your bank and get told ‘no’, or opt for an unsecured loan and pay through the nose, ultimately adding to the cash flow problem.
“Neither option was good enough and everything else seemed too complex or confusing – so we built something different.
“Now NatWest is coming on board to pilot the solution with their business customers. Given one in five businesses bank with NatWest, this partnership provides us the opportunity to make a real dent in the working capital gap and help UK businesses grow.”
Vincent said Bourn’s approach was very different to other FinTechs.
“Banks bring the balance sheet, and own the customer relationships,” he said. “Bourn brings the technology, payments and channels.
“We call it ‘embedded FinTech’ and we’re just getting started.”
Bourn’s CEO Nick Tracey said: “We continue to deliver on our mission to reinvent the overdraft for businesses and these funds will accelerate the scale-up of our flexible trade account in 2026.”
Scott Marcar, chief information officer at NatWest Group, said: “This investment reinforces our commitment to supporting innovative FinTechs to deliver the solutions businesses need to scale and succeed.”