21 January 2019

Financial Times: Banks embrace Fintech to exploit disrupter expertise

Barclays and Santander have taken stakes in British Fintech group MarketInvoice in a sign of established lenders’ growing willingness to team up with technology-driven challengers.

Barclays and Santander InnoVentures, the venture capital arm of Spanish bank Santander, jointly led a £26m equity investment in the London-based technology group.

The companies declined to comment on valuation, but documents filed with Companies House suggest the deal valued MarketInvoice at about £85m.

Big banks and fintechs have become increasingly keen to work together despite sometimes competing for the same customers.

Smaller firms such as MarketInvoice benefit from access to banks’ long-established customer bases, while banks can exploit smaller players’ specialist knowledge or ability to develop products more quickly.

Anil Stocker, MarketInvoice chief executive, said the investment would help the British lender grow its presence in the UK and expand overseas in partnership with Santander later this year.

Barclays announced its intention to purchase a “significant” minority stake in the company last August, but upped the size of its investment after a successful trial offering MarketInvoice products to its existing business customers, Mr Stocker said.

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

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