Embed Financial Technologies, a clearing and custody startup set up by a former Square executive, has raised $60 million in Series A funding as it prepares to launch in US financial markets.
The funding comprises over $20m in equity, and a $40m flexible debt facility from TriplePoint Capital. Together with a seed funding round in April, Embed has now raised $80m across both equity and debt.
It comes as the firm's wholly-owned SEC-registered Finra member broker-dealer subsidiary Embed Clearing, has been approved as a member of the Nasdaq Stock Market, as well as a correspondent clearing member of National Securities Clearing Corporation and custody member of The Depository Trust Company.
Eighteen months in the making, the company has now received all the necessary approvals to execute, clear, settle and custody US listed equities for other broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, banks and trust companies. Operating its own inhouse proprietary core technology platform, Embed is set to launch later this quarter.
Embed is founded by Michael Giles, who previously ran Square subsidiary Cash App Investing. Earlier this month, the company hired Lars Beal, former head of Cash App Investing engineering and Square technology leader, as Embed CTO.
Says Giles: "Incumbent players in this industry have been running on decades-old legacy software for far too long. The status quo in B2B fintech is that APIs are superficial and only skin deep and that it's OK to stitch together half a dozen legacy batch systems, wrap an API layer over the top, and consider that innovation. Clients were unhappy and the market was screaming out for a better solution. Embed is the solution to that problem,"