Devengo, a Spanish fintech that provides payment infrastructure services, has raised a €1.2 million Seed financing round. The instant payment API developed by this fintech helps its clients to orchestrate mass payouts programmatically and instantaneously
Now, with the help of this fresh capital, Devengo wants to support more companies unleashing the power of real-time payments. To do that they are hiring go-to-market specialists, compliance experts, and more developers.
The financing round was led by TheVentureCity, global early-stage venture fund, investing in product-centric startups across the US, Europe, and Latam. Also participated in the Seed investment the Spanish entrepreneur Felipe Navío and the Chilean entrepreneur Leo Soto.
This comes at a time when only 11% of payments in the SEPA regions are instant. In Spain, this number goes up to 46,89%, way above the European average. Thanks to the Spanish experience and its benefits, the EU is working on law that would make it mandatory for banks in the region to provide instant payments in euros 24/7. The main objective of this is to modernize the European payments infrastructure.
It is also the case that in an inflationary environment such as the current one, increasing the frequency of payments through instant payments could provide some protection against inflation. Although the Devengo API has many uses. For example, payroll companies can develop real-time salary and salary advance value propositions. Insurance companies, can make pay claims faster and as part of their validation process. For lenders, Devengo also helps them to provide credit faster and allows them for programmatic settlement given that money gets transferred and settled instantaneously.
Devengo is in the process of getting a Payments Institution license from the Bank of Spain, a regulatory approval that is going to happen in the next few months. Nevertheless, they have already been working with top clients Spanish unicorn Jobandtalent as well as the salary advance startup Payflow.
Fernando Cabello-Astolfi and Alberto Molpeceres, co-Founders of Devengo, say: “We live in a real-time world. Payments should be too. This is just the start of exciting times to come. Anything that is not an instant payment would be considered ancient history in the next few years. Money should not stay in limbo for 1 or 2 business days. It is not Pareto optimal. Real-time money increases efficiency and allows for new value propositions to be developed”.
Devengo has been co-founded by Molpeceres, founder of Besepa, and leader of the team that got the first payments institution license in Spain, and Cabello-Astolfi, a serial fintech entrepreneur since 2010 and a business angel with more than 30 active investments all around the world mainly in fintech (Latam, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East). Prior to Devengo, Cabello-Astolfi founded Aplazame in 2014, leading Spanish BNPL acquired in 2018 by Wizink Bank.
Andrés Dancausa, General Partner of TheVentureCity, says: “There is an instant payments revolution underway and Devengo has the secret key to it. We trust that Fernando and his team have found the crucial factor to develop a new era of massive real-time banking”.