Crowdfunding platform Seedrs and Oval Money have formed a joint venture that will allow European customers to invest in the personal finance fintech’s early-stage funding from one app.
The move comes as London-based Oval launches A £1m cash call on the country’s largest crowdfunding platform. This follows a £4m cash injection from Milan-based asset manager Eurizon Capital last month.
In this current funding round, Oval users will be available to register, become authorised and invest in the campaign directly from its app “without having to leave it once”. The firms claim this is a first.
Oval was founded in 2017, by former chief executive of Uber Italy Benedetta Arese Lucini (pictured), as well as Claudio Bedino, Edoardo Benedetto and Simone Marzola.
‘Asset class variety’
The app, which has 350,000 users, allows customers to invest, monitor their spending and save.
The fintech says its goal is to offer customers access to a wide “variety of asset classes and investment opportunities” helping them be “smarter with their spending and investing for the future”. It also issues its own Visa card.
Oval chief executive Arese Lucini said: “We’re always looking for ways to expand our investment marketplace offering so our users have the best products on the market available to them.”
She added: “Offering our users the opportunity to invest in private equity is exactly the type of innovation we are continually striving to do, and we’re looking forward to seeing how our partnership with Seedrs develops after our raise as we continue to innovate on accessible and inclusive opportunities for our users.”
Platform neutral
The personal finance fintech has raised $12.1m to date, according to research business Crunchbase.
Seedrs chief technology officer Ricardo Brizido added: “Our vision for Seedrs is to be a part of the wider fintech ecosystem, allowing investors to access this exciting asset class from anywhere, whether that’s their bank or their favourite fintech app.”
London-based Seedrs has raised more than £720m of funding from mainly small investors from over 900 start-up pitches since it was founded in 2012.
