Danish fintech unicorn Pleo, which offers a spend management platform, has secured a €40 million debt financing facility from HSBC Innovation Banking UK, the specialist financial partner for the innovation economy. In recent months, HSBC Innovation Banking invested in London fintech Liberis.
This comes after the Series C funding of $200 million that was raised back in 2021 at a valuation of $4.7 billion.
Why this move?
Over the last six months, the company has seen an average of 6% of its total transactions fail due to insufficient funds. Pleo’s partnership with HSBC Innovation Banking will alleviate such pain points and boost its credibility in the market. It will also fuel further growth following an already impressive period for the company.
This deal enables Pleo to offer higher credit limits to more customers, providing greater flexibility in the financial options available to them. Also, it helps the fintech unicorn to unlock new customers in new markets and currencies.
While Pleo’s overdraft facilities are already in use across Sweden, Germany, the UK, and Denmark, the debt financing facility will help it drive further growth across Europe. It will roll out overdraft facilities in the Netherlands over the coming weeks.
Appoints new CFO
In addition to the debt financing, Pleo has also confirmed the appointment of Søren Westh Lonning as the company’s CFO. Announced back in December, Søren’s appointment brings over 20 years of financial leadership experience to complement the existing leadership team at Pleo.
Expense management platform
Founded by fintech veterans Jeppe Rindom and Niccolo Perra in 2015 in Copenhagen, Pleo is a cloud-based expense management solution designed to help businesses handle the sharing of corporate credit cards among employees, record receipts or reimbursements, and track spending in real-time. Features include fraud detection, expense reconciliation, permission management, and image capture.
Pleo lets accountants generate on-demand prepaid virtual cards for online purchases and plastic cards for offline shopping and set up custom spending limits. Managers can receive notifications for every transaction, capture receipts, and automatically categorise purchases. Using the dashboard, supervisors can view all purchases and add custom tags for accounting procedures.
Amit Kahana, VP of Credit and Treasury at Pleo, explained: “We are delighted to announce our partnership with HSBC Innovation Banking. Starting at €40 million, the debt financing available to us can extend based on future requirements – which will expand our existing reach even further into more countries, enabling us to increase limits and offer more currencies. Beyond this milestone partnership and imminent launch in the Netherlands, we are expecting to see exciting developments over the coming 12 months as we prepare to launch in even more markets.”
Conor Sheehy, Managing Director, Head of Warehouse Finance, HSBC Innovation Banking UK added: ”This transaction demonstrates HSBC Innovation Banking’s capabilities to provide multi-currency, multi-jurisdictional facilities to support leading credit originators launching new and innovative products. We are proud to be providing Pleo with this facility and look forward to supporting them to continue on their global growth trajectory.”
