Last time we checked on Zaver, the Swedish B2C Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) provider in Europe, the company raised a $5 million funding round in 2021. The company has now completed its $10 million extension of its Series A funding round. , the total Series A will be $20 million. The total investment amount so far reaches $30 million.
In Europe, Zaver competes in BNPL with Klarna, PayPal, and incumbents such as Santander and BNP Paribas.
However, Zaver claims that its risk assessment algorithm can assess the risk of BNPL cart sizes up to €200,000 in real time. Other he BNPL providers, at least in Europe, rarely offer funds above 3,000 euros.
The company, founded in mid-2016 by Amir Marandi and Linus Malmen while students at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has a strategic partnership with the Nissan Group in direct-to-consumer sales and customer relations in Northern Europe. With Volkswagen and Porsche.
This will allow customers to purchase cars with BNPL as well.
CEO and founder Amir Marandi said the company's ability to offer scale-agnostic payment solutions is due to the fact that much of its product development is driven by “advanced risk assessment algorithms rather than linear regression models (as with other models).” He told me that it's because he spends so much money.
“While our competitors have focused on marketing, we have been resolutely focused on the back-end engineering side,” he said.
He believes the declining acceptance rate of large transactions in the payments industry means an opportunity for “scale-agnostic payment platforms” of up to €200,000.
This may be where the BNPL industry is heading.
Early innovators such as Klarna, Trustly, Tink, and iZettle capitalized on this shift to online payments, but the expansion of e-commerce infrastructure has set the stage for an increase in average online transaction values.
This shift first appeared in 2012, when Elon Musk proposed selling Tesla online, and many OEMs are now trying to use BNPL to “sell directly to consumers.”
Series A investors include FROS Ventures, Hållbar AB, Hobohm Brothers Equity, JOvB Investments, MAHR Projects, Skagerack Ventures, and King.com founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi.