Yapily will use the Series A funding to drive open banking across Europe.

Yapily, a fintech startup that offers an open banking API, raised $13 million in a Series A round despite swirling panic around the coronavirus. The round was led by Lakestar, which also funded Revolut, Skype, Spotify, Airbnb and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB). (EU-Startups)

Existing investors HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and LocalGlobe and angel investors also participated. Angel investors also include Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise chairman and co-founder), Ott Kaukver (Twilio’s CTO), Roberto Nicastro (UniCredit’s former deputy CEO) and Frank Strauss (Former CEO of Deutsche Postbank).

Yapily: Connect to banks easily

Founded in 2017, Yapily enables easy connections to banks via its API. The startup has a whole range of clients – from Fortune 500 companies to fintechs. Clients include IBM (NYSE: IBM), GoCardless and Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) QuickBooks.

Quickbooks, the accounting software provider, uses Yapily’s API to connect thousands of SME customers to bank accounts in the UK, France & Ireland.

Yapili said it will use the funds to drive open banking adoption by organizations across Europe; providing a strong, secure and powerful connectivity layer that enriches customer experiences and creates financial opportunity.

The fintech has grown its monthly recurring revenue by over 500% in the last six months. Also, it expanded its footprint to Italy, Ireland and France.

In May 2019, Yapili raised €4.8 million in seed funding from HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and LocalGlobe to develop its API platform.

Yapily during coronavirus

Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO of Yapily, said the company was providing its customers with greater control of their finances through the creation of products and services which can fuel greater financial management and accessibility. “Something that’s more essential than ever during this period of uncertainty,” he said in a statement.

Stephen Nundy, Partner at Lakestar, said investors needed to support innovation during the period of uncertainty triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak. Citing Yapily’s market-leading technology he added:

“Their ‘Open API first’ approach, with no screen scraping or reverse engineering of functionality, ensures all parties are getting the performance, scale, and security expected of such a critical piece of API infrastructure.”

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