Polish fintech bags €1.6m in seed funding as it eyes Nordics expansion
Warsaw-based fintech startup BidFinance has raised €1.6m (£1.4m) in seed financing from venture capital funds 4growth VC, FundingBox and a group of business angels.
BinFinance is an auction platform for trading debt portfolios that was founded in 2022. The funding will be used to strengthen its proposition in the Polish market and accelerate the company’s international expansion, which will begin in the Nordics.
The platform connects sellers with potential buyers of debt portfolios using an auction model that looks to lower the entry barriers to buyers.
“The key advantage of our solution over the traditional debt portfolio sales model is the maximization of the seller’s price. One of our clients previously sold its debt portfolios at an average of 15 per cent of their value. After listing the portfolio on our platform, the price increased to 26 per cent. So far, the maximum added value to the portfolio’s starting price during an auction has exceeded 80 per cent,” said Zenia Karastoyanov, chief executive of BidFinance.
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Since inception, there have been over 70 transactions on the platform with the total value of the portfolios exceeding PLN 1.2bn (£239m). “The secured funding will enable further platform development and significantly scale our operations in Poland. We are also intensively preparing for international expansion – we will conduct the first auctions outside the Polish market in the second quarter of this year,” added Karastoyanov.
BidFinance expects to generate its first international revenues this year, with the Polish market eventually accounting for only 20 per cent of total revenue by 2028.
“The company’s past performance validates the auction platform’s assumptions for debt portfolios in the Polish market. BidFinance’s solution has been very well received by both sellers and buyers. The company is now entering the next phase of development in international markets. We strongly believe in and support BidFinance’s ambition to become a regional champion” commented Tomasz Mazuryk, managing partner at FundingBox Deep Tech fund.
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