Financial API provider TrueLayer has secured $7.5m (£5.77m) to take its company across Europe, starting with Germany and France.
The multi-million Series A funding round was led by venture capital fund Northzone, which has previously invested in Spotify, Klarna, Zopa and iZettle. Existing investors Connect and Anthemis also contributed.
The remainder of the investment will be used to grow its team and develop new products.
TrueLayer’s service provides an interface between financial institutions and third-party applications over an API. Its first product is the Data API, which allows companies to securely access the financial data of their customers.
The London-based company was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneurs, Francesco Simoneschi and Luca Martinetti. Simoneschi said: “Over the past few months our entire team has worked exceptionally hard to develop our product and secure new clients and partnerships. This has enabled us to play a major role in the development of Open Banking in the UK, and now, with this investment, we’ll be able to expand our service across Europe.
“In the coming months, we will be busy expanding to more and more countries as well as releasing a wealth of new functionalities and products to our Bank API platform,” he added.
TrueLayer has raised $11.9m across multiple round of investments since its inception. It has also partnered with companies including Monzo, Starling Bank, Zopa, ClearScore, Canopy, Plum and Emma since the launch of Open Banking earlier this year.
Simoneschi added: “We are extremely excited to see so many companies becoming seriously interested in Open Banking and PSD2 and we continue to believe this is an unparalleled opportunity for the financial and tech industries. It is already driving innovation and competition which is great news for consumers, yet we are only 1% done. We want TrueLayer to be the key player in the creation of a secure infrastructure that underpins Open Banking and this investment is a big step forward on this journey.”
Using TrueLayer, businesses can verify identity and account ownership using existing customer data; view accounts, check balances, and access transaction history; query bank accounts and cards to build powerful applications; and mitigate fraud and enhance credit scoring modelling using detailed income and expenses data from users’ bank account.
Jeppe Zink, partner at Northzone, explained the role that TrueLayer holds in Open Banking: “Although people will continue to hold their money in bank accounts, the walled gardens of these institutions are being knocked down, and banking transactions will increasingly take place elsewhere.
“To enable this to function, you need thousands of banks to deliver transaction data in a single, secure and compliant way. This is a massive undertaking which TrueLayer intends to be the centrepiece of. We love the vision, ambition, and the audacity of the team in rising to the challenge,” he concluded.