Upvest, a Berlin-based startup offering a plug-and-play API for fintechs entering the investment market, has raised €30 million and secured a deal with BlackRock known for investing in IDnow, Flexe, and AlphaSense. Other investors that participated in the round include Bessemer Venture Partners, HV Capital, Earlybird, Notion Capital, ABN Amro Ventures, and 10x Capital.
The deal with BlackRock will see the firm lean on the former’s heft and investment expertise as it broadens its offering to larger financial institutions. Upvest plans to use the funds to make investing more accessible for millions of people across Europe.
Customised investment products
Founded by Ivan Morozov, Jesper Noehr, Martin Kassing, and Tobias Auferoth in 2017, Upvest’s Investment API offers a wide range of investment products such as stocks and ETFs in nominal, portfolio, and fractional form. Its mission is to make investing as easy as spending money.
Upvest enables businesses to build great investment experiences, tailored to their customers’ needs. With some of Europe’s largest fintechs as clients, Upvest collaborates with distributors looking to evolve their digital investment infrastructure to reduce cost and complexity or expand geographically.
Upvest’s technology enables fintechs to develop and create investment products across a variety of use cases, ranging from crypto trading to fractional investing, while still adhering to European regulations.
Upvest holds BaFin licences for securities, crypto brokerage and custody, and has struck partnership agrements with BNP Securities for custodial services and ABN Amro for payments.
Timo Toenges, Head of iShares EMEA Digital Wealth business at BlackRock, said: “Millions of Europeans are embracing investing for the first time to build a better financial future for themselves. BlackRock’s partnership with Upvest will drive innovation in how Europeans access markets and make it cheaper and simpler to start investing. Across Europe ETFs are at the core of these new propositions and often the default choice for investors, as a transparent, low cost and easily understood starting point for a new generation of investors.”
Martin Kassing, Co-founder and CEO at Upvest, added: “One of the world’s leading providers of investments meets leading European investment infrastructure. We are incredibly proud of this partnership as a way to increase investment adoption for millions of people. With only a fraction of the European population investing in stocks and ETFs, we feel the urge to provide a better investment infrastructure to companies facilitating easy and affordable investment experiences. Together with BlackRock’s investment expertise, we can now serve any financial institution to upgrade their investment offering.”
