Embedded banking fintech Weavr lands $4m seed round

​Weavr, a London-based fintech looking to help services industries embed banking, has landed a $4 million seed round.

Investors include Monese, Anthemis, QED Investors – which also backs Zopa and SoFi – and Revolut-backer Seedcamp.

Weavr's Meta platform enables firms to bring together multiple banking and payments partners into a single platform

Alex Mifsud, Weavr's CEO, previously founded Ixaris, a payments provider for the travel industry. Weavr, formerly known as Open Payments Cloud, spun out of Ixaris in 2019.

Mifsud's first business, Entropay, launched Visa's first virtual prepaid card programme back in 2003.

"The need for simple and accessible embedded banking products could not be more urgent," says Mifsud of his latest venture.

"Embedded banking offers extraordinary potential for the future of work, the move away from cash, and the integration of financial services into all manner of digital businesses."

The proposition

Weavr intends to help services industries – such as education, fitness, employment and logistics – break into banking.

Its embedded banking solutions intend to bring down the barriers of an otherwise highly regulated financial industry.

Weavr's 'Meta' platform enables firms to bring together multiple banking and payments partners into a single platform. It essentially acts as the core technology for a virtual banking platform.

Using application programme interfaces (APIs), Weavr offers simpler solutions too – such as cards and IBANs. Both the businesses directly signing up to Weavr, and their customers, can use these solutions.

"Services segments can bring the bank to their customers, rather than send their customers to their bank," the company says in a statement.

"Financial services will increasingly be embedded into the process of buying and consuming other services."

According to Statista, 'e-retail' salessurpassed $3.5 trillion worldwide in 2019. With digital transactions only continuing to grow, Weavr is bidding on a more ecosystem approach to finance which stretches beyond the traditionally insular banking system.