After grossing $ 155 million in a round led by Tiger Global last September, it was only a matter of time before Scalapay, the piattaforma Bnpl (buy now-pay later) claimed the title of the first, true Italian startup with a valuation of over 1 billion dollars.
And indeed it happened: the startup co-founded by Simone Mancini in 2019 it announced it had closed a $ 497 million Series B round, bringing the total to $ 1.197 billion; this last round was led by Tencent and Willoughby Capital, with the participation of Tiger Global, Gangwal, Moore Capital, Deimos and Fasanara Capital.
How Scalapay was born and what is it for
Scalapay is one of the leading online payment solutions from southern Europe and helps more than 3 thousand companies to grow and their customers to live shopping experiences, offering deferred payments over time without additional costs.
Mancini (who is now 33 years old, he married at 22, has 3 children and a degree in Economics), he lived for almost 30 years in Australia with his 5 brothers and his family: his parents, originally from Empoli, had arrived on the continent in 1991 as lay missionaries of the Catholic Church, ready to leave for an international program wanted by John Paul II : “I’m raised among crocodiles and snakes 40 kilometers from Darwin, where my family was sent by Pope John Paul II on a mission “, he said.
A Sydney, Mancini e Johnny Mitrevski (the other founder of the company, an Australian of Macedonian origin) they start working in the field of ecommerce and notice that online retailers were struggling and that the possibility of deferring payments had a strong impact (also on Millennials and Generation Z). And so the two plan to bring buy now-pay later to Europe: in 2019 they set up the company in Lombardythe team expands and enter Raffaele Terrone, current CFO and former Goldman Sachs, Daniele Tessari and Mirco Mattevi.
The last steps, in view of the next steps
As mentioned, in September 2021 the startup closed a $ 155 million round with Tiger Global, reaching a valuation of 700 million. An almost unicorn, that in two years it has convinced thousands of companiesincluding Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria.
The company now has an international team of more than 150 people and LinkedIn has included it among the 10 best Italian startups which in the last year, despite the pandemic, have continued to grow and to hire. Driven by the mission of enabling merchants to “deliver amazing customer experiences,” Scalapay has created and launched a platform called Magic, designed to innovate the payment experience for customers and solve the most problematic areas for traders who wish to provide a world-class ecommerce solution.
“With the interest-free installments, we have transformed one of the most frustrating parts of the shopping experience, the paymentinto something pleasant, ”explained Mancini.