Synctera, an enabler of embedded banking and finance, announced that it had raised an $18.6 million extension to its 2021 Series A round. Lightspeed and Fin Capital co-led the round, alongside participation from previous investors NAventures and Diagram. New investors include Banco Popular and Mana Ventures.
Peter Hazlehurst, co-founder and CEO of Synctera, said:
“We’ve been very fortunate to be able to meticulously, and opportunistically, raise money on the back of super strong growth to double down on what’s working and accelerate our momentum with enterprise customers.”
In March of 2023, Synctera announced a $15 million strategic investment “led by NAventures, the corporate venture arm of National Bank of Canada, to expand its offerings into Canada, which was followed by its first Canadian customer launch in December 2023.”
After a successful kickoff of its partnership with National Bank of Canada in 2023, NAventures has “joined Synctera’s Series A extension.”
Joshuah Lebacq of NAventures, who previously “led Synctera’s strategic raise to accelerate expansion into Canada, shared:
“We are pleased by the progress we’ve made with Synctera in a relatively short time. We effectively unlocked new core banking and payment capabilities in months rather than years, which now serve as building blocks for long-term success. We knew that it was important to do things the right way, no matter how long it took, but the speed to market we’ve experienced exceeded expectations.”
Synctera’s end-to-end BaaS platform “enables companies of all sizes to build and launch FinTech apps and embedded banking products much faster, with the highest level of compliance, and at a significantly lower cost compared to building in-house or with multiple vendors and partners.”
Last year, Synctera experienced sizable growth, “including scaling ARR 4.5x, growing live customers more than 2x, and a 20x increase of spend on the platform.”
The company continued its trend of “serving larger and more established programs, and serving an ever wider range of unique use cases.”
To support Synctera’s 2024 surge, the company has added Leigh Gross “as its Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). With over a decade of experience in Fintech, Gross most recently led all sales and go to market at financial innovation platform Array.”
Prior to that, Gross held leadership posts “at end-to-end student loan solution Summer, student lending company CommonBond, and CAN Capital, capital provider to small and medium-sized businesses, in addition to over a decade of experience as a commercial attorney and in media.”
One emerging use case for Synctera in 2024 has “been international wealth management, a specialty that attracted BTG Pactual, the largest investment bank in Latin America. Synctera has partnered with BTG to offer accounts in the US for its LatAm clients. Such an undertaking would have required multiple partnerships or acquisitions and would have involved immense internal build-out were it not for the partnership.”
Synctera continues to support companies based in the US, “adding and launching customers such as EXO Freight, Waltz and Firstcard in 2023.”
Co-lead on the investment, Fin Capital’s Managing Partner & Founder, Logan Allin shared this on Synctera’s growth:
“Synctera’s early focus on technology, team building, regulatory alignment, and long-term bank relationships has set a solid foundation for continued growth. Fin Capital looks forward to continuing on this journey with Synctera.”