In a year of slowdown in births for new unicorns, the Italian Satispay closes a round D worth 320 million eurosand exceeds the valuation threshold of 1 billion. The operation, announced on September 28, sees the entry of Addition as lead investor, while Greyhound Capital, among other shareholders since 2018, follows and increases its stake in the company. Among the other shareholders who entered the capital in 2021, they decided to invest again Coatue, Lightrock, Block Inc, Tencent and Mediolanum Gestione Fondi Sgr.
The resources available
«We are very satisfied – comments Alberto Dalmasso, co-founder and CEO of Satispay – because, following this round, we feel we have all the tools and resources necessary to realize our vision: to create the next leading payment network in Europe. We not only feel we have the necessary capital, but also experience and skills. We have grown tremendously over the past two years, more than doubling our customer base and launching in three other European countries. We have also involved many talents in our team who are helping us to transform Satispay into a bigger, more structured and competitive reality. It is really – continues Dalmasso – a new beginning and we feel more determined than ever ».
A community of 3 million people
The operation was outlined following the attention shown by the market, immediately after the previous Series C round, towards the super network created by Satispay, a coveted but difficult model that the company was able to develop. and above all to grow very rapidly, with a community that has already exceeded 3 million people and 200,000 active and constantly growing stores. The collection was thus rapidly structured shortly after the previous round, ending very positively.
The company, founded in 2013 by Alberto Dalmasso, Dario Brignone and Samuele Pinta, had closed a 93 million round C in November 2020, of which 37 million came from Italian investors and the rest from international ones. Following that operation, new expressions of interest arrived.
The entry of new members
«Satispay – explains Dalmasso – has become in the last two years a project that was being carried out and investors have started looking for us. Then, having the cash of the previous increase, we also had the ability to negotiate on the entry values of the new shareholders. At the same time we continued to develop new ideas to grow more and therefore had future prospects to present to investors. In the last year – adds the co-founder and CEO of Satispay – we have really accelerated and we have just reached 3 million users: the first million users were created in 70 months, the second million in 20 months, the third million in 10 months. There was the ability internally to activate the right actions to grow at this rate. With the previous capital increase we started to think big and for the first time we found ourselves being able to grow without limits, also forcing the company to a new hiring, organization and structuring dynamic ».