Pleo, a FinTech start-up which offers a ‘smart’ credit card and software designed to automate employee expense reports, has closed a $16 million funding round to expand.
The Series A financing round was led by Kinnevik, a European venture fund based in Stockholm, with participation from existing backers Creandum, Founders and Seedcamp. The round brings the total amount raised by the company to $23 million.
Pleo combines payment cards that can be easily assigned to employees with individually set limits, with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending in real-time with detailed analytics.
Currently only available in the UK and Denmark, around 1,500 companies have switched to Pleo just in the last year.
“It’s quite amazing what we have achieved in just a year in only two countries, since our launch from beta,” said Jeppe Rindom, who founded Pleo with Niccolo Perra.
“We’ve seen tremendous growth and great reception, due to our very focused and localised approach. Our NPS score is around 80, we receive incredible reviews and have negative churn, all very clear indicators that we are on the right path.”
Pleo will use the funding to rapidly expand its headcount in Denmark, UK and other countries around Europe, from 50 to more than 200 employees by the end of 2019 to help scale and accelerate product development:
“We are expanding our product offerings to fit more complex needs of bigger organisations by adding more customszed workflows, different integrations and premium offerings very soon,” Rindom added.
“Our objective is to become a default solution to handle all company spending for businesses of different sizes and needs, in each of the new markets we enter.”
Andreas Bernstrom, investment director at Kinnevik, will be joining the company’s board.
He added: “We are delighted to partner with Jeppe Rindom, Niccolo Perra and the whole Pleo team. They have shown strong growth and outstanding customer loyalty in a very short period of time.
“We are very excited to support their long-term journey and look forward to supporting their launch in new markets to become the European industry leader.”