A ‘buy now pay later’ travel agency has raised £15.8 million to fund the rollout of its app for online shopping payments.
London FinTech Butter was founded by Timothy Davis, Stefan Hobl and Nik Haukohl, achieving full FCA regulated status in 2017.
When the pandemic brought the travel and tourism industry to a grinding halt two years later, Butter launched a shopping app alongside its travel offering, enabling customers to spread the cost of any purchase from any online store.
Unlike other BNPL providers, Butter says its solution enables customers to spread the cost of purchases with every store on the internet, without requiring merchants to support Butter via a technical integration.
Its own in-app universal checkout takes care of paying retailers, with customers then able to repay the costs over 2, 3, or 4 monthly payments. It now has more than 100,000 customers.
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Popular stores in the Butter app include Amazon, Argos, BooHoo, ASOS, H&M, Zara, Hugo Boss, Sports Direct, AirBnB, Currys PC World, Ao.com, IKEA and more.
“Our goal at Butter has always been to provide consumers with a simple and responsible alternative to credit cards and loans, enabling them to instantly spread the cost of anything from a takeaway to a holiday over a simple and transparent instalment plan, all within one easy to use account,” said Davis.
“We want to remove the stigma surrounding the buy now pay later offering and empower consumers by allowing them to budget and spend intelligently and in a manner that suits their individual financial needs.
“We’ve set out to achieve this by building a platform focused around transparency, responsible lending and the ability to transact on bigger ticket items compared to other providers, whilst also offering more choice to customers through our unique over-the-top solution, which enables consumers to shop any online store in existence with Butter.”
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Butter raised the £15.8m via BCI Finance, the credit arm of London based venture builder Blenheim Chalcot, as well as a number of other private angel investors.
Paul Maurici, Investment Manager at BCI, commented: “Our mission at BCI is to be the funder of choice for UK FinTechs looking to scale.
“Butter is a young and ambitious company, which combines a tech-enabled approach to lending alongside impressive customer delivery capabilities.
“With its FCA authorisation already in place, the business is well placed to continue strong growth while assisting its customers in managing their money better.”