Software-as-a-service (SaaS) banking platform Mambu has raised €110 million (NZ$186.2 million) in funding, bringing the company's valuation to more than €1.7 billion. The funding will provide opportunities for expansion globally, including Australia and New Zealand.
According to Mambu's Australia and New Zealand general manager Kristofer Rogers, the company has achieved 'unicorn' status, despite the challenges thrown up by the pandemic. Rogers says the funding will help to boost its team and to provide local cloud-native core banking solutions to banks, financial institutions and fintechs across Australia and New Zealand.
Mambu's SaaS platform includes cloud banking and process orchestration services that operate to strict security standards.
Last year the company signed a deal with DigiBankASIA to provide services for the bank's new full-service digital bank called UNO. DigiBankASIA selected the Philippines as the location for its initial rollout.
"We selected Mambu's SaaS banking platform because composability and being cloud-native were top of our list of requirements - we knew that's what was needed to be able to build the bank we envisaged," commented UNO CTO Puneet Gupta in a statement from November 2020.
This latest funding round was backed by TCV, which is a capital investment firm that has backed the likes of Airbnb, Expedia, LinkedIn, Netflix, and Zillow.
"When Mambu launched in 2011, we knew the future of banking would have to be built on agile and flexible technology. Nearly a decade later, this is more true now than ever, particularly given developments over the past year. As an increasing number of challengers and established banks sign on to prepare themselves to thrive in the fintech era, we have, and will continue to provide them with a world-class platform on which to build modern, agile customer-centric businesses," comments Mambu CEO and cofounder Eugene Danilkis.
"This latest funding round allows us to accelerate our mission to make banking better for a billion people around the world and address one of the largest, most complex global market opportunities that's still in the infancy of cloud.
Mambu's APAC managing director Myles Bertrand says that the company will build its presence in markets such as Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
"Digital banking has experienced phenomenal growth over the past 12 months due in no small part to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this funding boost means that we are in a fantastic position to be able to scale rapidly and respond to changing market conditions across the Asia Pacific region.
