UK-based fintech startup Kroo has raised £17.7M (€20.8M) in a Series A funding round led by tech entrepreneur and founder of Karlani Capital, Rudy Karsan.
Currently, Kroo is in the process of securing a full banking license so that it can provide a comprehensive platform from which customers can navigate their financial lives.
Fund Utilisation
The capital raised will be used to mobilise the bank ahead of its launch in early 2022, the company mentions in a statement. Kroo will further utilise its Series A funding for scaling up operations, growing its team across engineering, marketing, product, compliance, and customer service, and further developing its product offering and app ahead of launch in 2022.
The company further adds that its CEO Andrea de Gottardo has played an important role in the development of Kroo’s business model and the delivery of Kroo’s banking license. Gottardo was already an experienced bank executive when he joined Kroo as Chief Risk Officer in 2018.
Andrea de Gottardo says, “We want to build the world’s greatest social bank: a bank dedicated to its customers and to the world we live in. We’re going to do more than just work with Kroo customers to improve their relationship with money and provide them with access to fair loans. We’re going to offer them ways to actively take part in making our world a better place, like carbon offsetting and a tree-planting referral programme.”
About Kroo
Currently, Kroo is in the developmental phase and is aiming to secure a full banking license so that it can provide customers with a safe current account, FSCS deposit protection, and loans at fair and competitive rates. It is planning to launch in early 2022. In the meantime, Kroo will test its concept through a prepaid card offering, issued under the e-money license of PayrNet Ltd.
Kroo is building a social bank that helps users decrease anxiety around finances and champion social causes, the company says in a statement. It aims to remove friction from financial interactions with friends and family. It currently does so by offering customers a prepaid debit card and ways to track their personal and social finances – enabling them to easily create groups with friends, track spending, and split and pay bills.
According to Kroo, it has been built on an agile technology platform that is microservices-based and cloud-native.
Kroo’s board-level social conscience committee has decided to actively contribute towards social good, and the company has pledged to donate a percentage of profits to social causes. For instance, a tree-planting referral scheme has already been launched so that every time a customer successfully refers a friend, Kroo plants 20 trees with the aim of creating a forest of one million trees.
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