Berlin-based Pliant, a B2B credit card platform, announced on Friday, February 17, that it has raised $28M (approximately €26M) in a Series A round of funding led by Japanese fintech investor SBI Investment.
Existing investors Alstin Capital, Motive Ventures, and Commerzbank’s early-stage fund neosfer, as well as new investors MS&AD Ventures, also participated in the round.
The German company says it intends to deploy the funds to deepen and expand the technical capabilities of its B2B credit card platform and to expand its go-to-market approach across additional geographies.
“Winning SBI Investment as an experienced fintech investor to lead the round is a great validation of our approach,” says Malte Rau, co-founder of Pliant.
Pliant: Offers corporate credit cards
Founded in 2020 by Malte Rau and Fabian Terner, Pliant offers modern corporate credit cards.
The company’s card management platform allows for flexible setting of card limits, real-time reporting, and can integrate with existing setup of accounting and travel expense management tools and processes.
The German company offers Visa credit cards, both virtual and physical.
In the case of physical cards, customers can choose between Blue (Visa Platinum Business) and Black (Visa Infinite Business credit cards).
Pliant says it is neither a prepaid nor a debit card and, therefore, is bank account independent and does not need to be charged in advance.
The company claims that its Visa cards are accepted by over 40M online and offline retailers in over 200 countries.
The Investors
SBI Investment is a venture capital firm based out of Japan. The VC has invested a total of 1,120 companies, both domestic and overseas, of which 190 companies have successfully become public through IPOs or were acquired by third parties through M&As.
Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, and President of SBI Investment, says, “Pliant’s vision and unique go-to-market have convinced us that Pliant has the potential to become a dominant B2B card provider.”
Ramin Niroumand, Partner at Motive Partners, says, “The strong growth throughout the year, combined with the high level of modularity of the product suite, are reasons that Pliant was able to raise such a significant series A round, despite the current market environment.”
Noel Zeh from Alstin says, “Since our initial ticket in August 2021 Pliant continuously impressed us with its enormous growth. We – and this is also shown by their exceptional customer retention – are convinced, that Fabian, Malte, and their team are on the right way to build the #1 B2B card provider.”
