Launched in January 2020, this French fintech raises €15M despite pandemic hurdles

Pennylane, a French fintech that created an online full-stack accounting service, has raised $18M (approx €15M) in its Series A round of funding from investors including Global Founders Capital and Partech.

Founded just a year ago, Pennylane raised its Seed round funding of $4.3M (approx €4M) from Global Founders Capital, Partech, and Kima Ventures in May 2020, and has been quickly growing since. 

Use of the currently raised funds

Speaking on the utilisation of the current raised capital, Arthur Waller, co-founder and CEO of Pennylane, says, “This new round of financing will enable Pennylane to fully pursue its mission of supporting the company’s management team in this context of crisis and forced digital transformation.”

He also mentioned that the company is developing a full-stack financial management platform which will automatically integrate all data for a clear view of the business and real-time management. This solution will be developed entirely in-house and will connect third-party tools to offer better user experience by integrating advanced features to make it a real day-to-day decision-making tool.

“For Pennylane, digital alone can do nothing, it must serve and empower managers and accountants,” says Waller.

Launches SaaS for businesses

Business leaders are close to their accountant but can sometimes get frustrated by the tools they use, which limit collaboration and real-time visibility into their company’s financial data. This is where Pennylane wants to help out and has expanded its offerings.

Besides the fresh funding round, the company has also announced the launch of a new solution that centralises all purchasing, sales, and banking transaction data to make it real management and decision-making tool for company managers. Managers will, of course, have the opportunity to give access to their accountants so they may keep the books.

About Pennylane

The company was launched in January 2020 by the founders of PriceMatch (acquired by Booking.com in 2015) Arthur Waller, Alexandre Roquoplo, Felix Blossier, and Edouard Mascré. Pennylane uses accounting data to help entrepreneurs manage their day-to-day business.

For every business, there are too many tools that are poorly synchronised with each other, the collaboration with accountants seems outdated, and visibility on activity and cash flows is lacking too. Pennylane thus developed an innovative accountancy service, Pennylane Compta, which reconciles accounting and management, in particular the use of a platform shared between the accountant and the business manager.

The company markets its product in the form of a monthly subscription which includes both the bookkeeping and the consulting part, as well as the provision of the software.

Pennylane provides solutions to businesses such as:

• Connected: All of the company’s financial data (banking, accounting, supplier invoices, customer invoices, expense reports) are synchronised on a single platform.
• In real-time: Every data is updated in real-time on the platform so business owners can make informed decisions anytime.
• Smart: Pennylane makes data actionable to help leaders make the right decisions for their business.
• Automated: The platform saves time by replacing manual actions.

Since its inception, the startup claims to have generated a revenue of more than $2.4M (approx €2M), hired about 30 accountants and 15 developers, and now supports over more than 500 customers on a daily basis (mostly start-ups, SMEs, e-commerces, and restaurant owners).