Griffin has raised an additional £12.5 million in funding as it seeks to become the ‘operating system for embedded finance’.
The London startup, which has unicorn ambitions and recently applied to become a fully authorised bank, was founded in 2017 with the mission of becoming a technology-first bank designed to help FinTechs and innovative companies quickly launch and scale financial products.
It recently promoted Maria Campbell to the position of chief operating officer after Adam Moulson was announced as interim CEO while co-founder David Jarvis takes parental leave.
The latest round was led by Notion Capital, with participation from existing investor EQT Ventures as well as FinTech angels including William Hockey, co-founder of Plaid and founder and co-CEO of Column; Nilan Peiris, VP of growth at Wise; Rob Straathof, CEO at Liberis; and Shane Happach, CEO of Mollie and ex-CCO at Worldpay.
Griffin also welcomes Notion Capital co-founder and managing partner Stephen Chandler to its board of directors. Chandler’s previous investments include FinTech unicorns GoCardless and Paddle.
“We’re thrilled to be working with Notion Capital and to have someone of Stephen’s calibre join our board. His experience fits perfectly with our vision to blend the worlds of banking and technology in one powerful platform,” said Jarvis.
“With this injection of funding, we can continue to innovate, scale our business, and focus on building the best banking platform possible.”
The company has raised $27m of funding to date.
“SaaS is finally eating the financial services sector the way it has every other industry, and Griffin will empower FinTechs to build and launch financial products with a single secure and modern SaaS platform,” said Chandler.
“I’m thrilled to support the team as they rewrite the way companies interact with banks and accelerate growth.”
Allen Rohner, founder and former CTO of tech unicorn CircleCI, founded the company with Jarvis in 2017 and have since assembled a formidable team of tech and banking leaders from the Bank of England – PRA, Visa, HSBC, Form3, SWIFT, Monzo, GoCardless, Atlassian and Snyk.
Since its last funding announcement in November 2020, Griffin has tripled in size and begun commercialising its platform, currently available for exclusive early access.
This new round of investment will be used to grow the leadership and operational teams and continue the build of the core banking platform.