Brite Payments eyes European instant payments growth with $60m funding round

Sweden-based instant bank payments provider Brite Payments has raised $60 million in a funding round led by Dawn Capital, to accelerate its geographic expansion.

Dawn Capital, which is a specialist B2B software investor, was joined by global venture capital firm Headline and existing investor Incore in the fundraising.

The capital injection will also fuel product development at Brite Payments, which uses Open Banking to give businesses a “complete, out-of-the-box” instant payments and payouts solution.

Some of the capital will be invested in its proprietary network, the Brite Instant Payments Network, launched earlier this year.

Lena Hackelöer, founder and CEO of Brite Payments

Lena Hackelöer, founder and chief executive officer of Brite Payments, said: “We see account-to-account payments gaining momentum across Europe, but merchants are still struggling to realise the full potential for their businesses.

“That’s why we’ve built a complete instant A2A payments and payouts offering that can be plugged into any checkout, while eliminating operational hassles, such as settlement accounts, reconciliation or FX.”

She called 2022 “our breakthrough year”, and added that with the funding round, “we’re ready to accelerate our growth and bring Brite to more markets and checkouts across Europe”.

Josh Bell, general partner at Dawn Capital, said: “We are on the cusp of Open Banking 2.0. The prospect of real-time account-to-account payments becoming mainstream across Europe is on the horizon, and Brite stands to be the category leader.

“We’ve been on the ground in this space from the start, with early investments in Swedish fintech leaders including iZettle and Tink, and we believe Brite is on an equally stellar path.”

He added: “Lena is an extremely impressive CEO with first-rate domain knowledge and the all-round skills to build another market-leading global fintech from Europe.”

In August, Brite extended its payments coverage to Denmark, launching Open Banking-powered instant payments and instant payouts in the country.

Lena Hackelöer is speaking about what’s next for Open Banking payments at Open Banking Expo UK & Europe on 18-19 October in London. Find out more about the speaker line-up and agenda, and get your tickets here.