Europe’s New Fintech Unicorn: Pleo Now Valued at $1.7 Billion
The core business of Pleo is expense management software designed for the corporate. This Danish start-up Pleo also offers smart payment cards, and it recently went through the latest round of funding. It was noted that Pleo boosted its valuation to $1.7 billion in a $150 million equity financing round. During this round of funding, most of the investment came from Thrive Capital and Bain Capital Venture. With the new valuation, Pleo also became the largest private company in Europe to surpass the $1 billion unicorn valuation mark.
Danish Pleo Series 1.7bbrownecnbc
In one of the interviews with CNBC, the CEO Jeppe Rindom mentioned that the digitalization & automation process in the payments and finance processes are of great help to the corporates, and Pleo helps them by offering smart solutions to make the process smarter. It was also noted that Covid-19 has further accelerated the growth of Pleo as the customer base doubled during the first year of the pandemic. In addition, the covid-19 has made people work from home and thus offsetting a decline in international business travel.
The main source of revenue for Pleo is the interchange fee it gets from the merchant’s bank account when a customer uses the credit card. This accounts for approximately 70% of its revenue. The remaining 30% of revenue comes from Pleo’s paid subscriptions.
After the new investments in Pleo, it was noted that Keri Gohman from the Bain Capital Venture would join Pleo’s board. Keri Gohman is a man of great learning and has held executive positions at companies like U.S. Bank Capital One and Accounting Software Provider Xero. The new $1.7 billion valuation is a big boost for the company and sets an example for other fintech companies in Denmark.
Pleo was also open about the expansion plan. The company mentioned that it plans to expand its services to the countries U.K. Pleo is also expected to expand its network to other continents soon.
The Fintech companies have been raising a lot of funds, and this has contributed to the ever-increasing valuation of the Fintechs. There are many such examples of these fintech companies within Europe. Many new companies are entering the 1 Billion club when it comes to valuation. Danish pleo 150m series 1.7bbrownecnbc is nothing but it went upto 1.7 billion .
It is also known that the CEO of Pleo was earlier working for Tradeshift. Tradeshift was once based in Copenhagen and touched a valuation of $1.1 Billion, but eventually, Tradeshift moved its headquarters to San Francisco. We are sure that the experience of Pleo’s CEO came in handy to touch this new valuation mark.
