A new fintech investment firm has launched targeting €150m warchest aimed at start-ups in Europe and the US.
Luxembourg-based MiddleGame Ventures said it plans to invest in business-to-business and business-to-consumer start-ups, “driving the transformation of financial services from analog to digital and from centralised to decentralised, with an emphasis on middleware and back-office solutions”.
It added, the areas it will focus on include RegTech, findata and “crypto-enabled infrastructure” across banking, asset management, insurance, payments, and capital markets.
The firm is backed by the Luxembourg Future Fund and the European Investment Fund, who helped achieve its first close, which it did not disclose. MiddleGame Ventures added it planned to hit €150m from additional institutional and private investors in 2020.
Financial cross-currents
The investment firm was founded by fintech veteran Pascal Bouvier (pictured), Michael Meyer and Patrick Pinschmidt. It adds the partners have previously invested more than $300m in such early-stage fintechs as Ripple, Tandem Banka and Coverhound.
Bouvier said: “Our investors agree that specialist funds with experience working with entrepreneurs, incumbent financial institutions and regulators are best placed to thrive in an environment characterised by financial and technological cross-currents and significant regulatory constraints.”
MiddleGame Ventures said it has already made three undisclosed investments in three UK fintech start-ups: capital markets platform Nivaura, banking-as-a-service firm Railsbank and big data analytics group Gardenia Technologies.
European Investment Fund chief executive Pier Luigi Gilibert said: “The European Investment Fund has a strong commitment to innovation in Europe, and we hope that this fund, with its focus on FinTech entrepreneurs, will assist us in that goal.”
Booming fintech funding
Investor funding for the fintech sector continues on apace, with $8.9bn raised in the third quarter of the year, according to research firm CB Insights, making it one of the busiest on record.
Fintech firms have raised a total of $24.6bn for new companies so far this year, with most of that has focused on digital banking and wealth management.
