Synctera Announces $18.6M Funding Boost, Appoints New CRO, To Support Largest New Customers’ US Expansions
The Series A-1 investment, co-led by Lightspeed and Fin Capital, in combination with appointment of new CRO Leigh Gross, supercharges Synctera’s efforts to scale its embedded banking and finance business to support increasingly larger and more complex use cases in additional International markets and in the US
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March 4th, 2024) - Synctera, a leader in embedded banking and finance, announced today that it has raised an $18.6 million extension to its 2021 Series A round, with Lightspeed and Fin Capital co-leading alongside participation from other previous investors NAventures and Diagram. New investors include Banco Popular and Mana Ventures.
“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," said Peter Hazlehurst, co-founder and CEO of Synctera.
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 today:
“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.” he said.
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.
Another new customer that’s fueling growth for Synctera in 2024 is Africa’s leading payments technology company, Flutterwave. On the partnership, CEO GB Olugbenga shared, “We’re really thrilled to be partnering with Synctera to broaden our offerings in the US. We did a lot of homework and felt that their focused and deep approach to compliance in partnership with their sponsor banks, combined with a flexible platform was the best fit for our needs.”
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 steady, and impressive growth:
“Since first investing in June 2021, we've been impressed with Synctera's ability to execute and scale by supporting a broad set of use cases that have pushed the envelope on what embedded banking and finance could become, while remaining grounded in the first principles of compliant banking. 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.”
In 2024, Synctera plans to launch payment product SyncteraPay, an offering that allows companies with existing third party payment provider relationships to leverage the Synctera Platform accounts offering and ledger to process and settle payments, as well as support for FedNow, and expansion into new geographies and client segments.
About Synctera
Launched in 2020, Synctera is powering the future of finance for companies that want to create new revenue streams and enhance their value proposition by offering banking products. With APIs, compliance support, and bank partners in one end-to-end platform, Synctera is the faster, and more compliant, alternative to building your own solution to support bank accounts, debit cards, charge cards, lending, money movement, and more.
