Neat, a Hong Kong-based fintech offering multicurrency accounts to SMEs and startups, has raised a $4 million extension to its $11 million Series A round closed in April.
Existing investors MassMutual Ventures, Pacific Century Group, Linear Capital and Robby Hilkowitz as well as new investor Vectr Fintech participated in the Series A Extension. Mastercard and Visa both contributed to the April first round.
After opening an office in Shenzhen in 2019 targeting Chinese exporters, Neat has just opened a new office in London and is set to kick off local operations in Western Europe to also serve the other side of the market: European entrepreneurs trading with China.
While Covid-19 has caused an economic slowdown, new company incorporations are still on the rise with more than 175,000 new companies incorporated in the UK in Q2 of 2020 compared to 170,000 the same period last year; in Hong Kong, over 27,000 companies were incorporated in Q2 of 2020.
David Rosa, CEO of Neat, comments: “Some of the world’s most successful companies were born during or just after the financial crisis of 2008, think of WhatsApp and Uber. The majority of businesses founded during Covid-19 will have a digital-first mindset, which means they will have an opportunity to start trading globally from day one."
He says Neat's ultimate goal beyond cross-border money movement, is to provide small businesses with a wide-range of tools in payroll, accounting and supply chain logisitics to remove the friction from trading overseas.