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Revolutionizing startup fundraising: iBanFirst and SeedBlink join forces for faster, cost-effective European investments
Accelerating growth for startups with exclusive financial services and swift onboarding
- Investors can transfer funds from over 140 countries in more than 32 currencies.
- The account opening process on the iBanFirst platform has been streamlined from 10 days to just a few hours, ensuring compliance and AML requirements are met efficiently.
- Both fundraising startups and investors will access preferential FX rates, faster payments, cost-efficient terms, and dedicated support.
Bucharest, August 12: iBanFirst, a leading global provider of foreign exchange and international payments for businesses, announces an innovative partnership with SeedBlink, Europe's all-in-one equity and investment platform. The collaboration between the two European Fintechs introduces a bespoke solution for fundraising startups and their private investors, ensuring faster onboarding and access to preferential FX rates.
"Collaborating with SeedBlink to introduce dedicated collection accounts represents a significant milestone in enhancing financial accessibility and transaction efficiency for scaling startups," shares Johan Gabriels, Regional Director for South-East Europe at iBanFirst. "This strategic partnership demonstrates our dedication to empowering businesses with seamless international payment solutions and personalized financial services tailored to their unique needs."
Traditional banking solutions often fail to meet the efficiency and customization needs of investment platforms, resulting in slower transactions, higher costs, and cumbersome administrative processes. This partnership addresses these challenges by introducing dedicated collection accounts for each funding round on iBanFirst’s platform. This service is tailored to accommodate SeedBlink’s complex needs, collecting multi-currency investments from around 50 European investors per project. Onboarding each account now takes a few hours, down from 10 days with traditional providers.
"Our partnership with iBanFirst underscores our commitment to providing top-tier financial solutions and democratizing a wide range of opportunities for both startups and investors," said Carmen Sebe, CEO of SeedBlink. "By leveraging iBanFirst's expertise in international payments and currency exchange services, we are setting a new standard for customer satisfaction and operational excellence within the equity and investment industry."
For investors, this partnership translates into improved financial terms for their currency exchanges and international payments. Investors can commit funds primarily in euros, but if a fundraising startup is based in Switzerland, the investments will be converted to the appropriate currency before being transferred to the startup. Additionally, investors can request to transfer their investments in multiple currencies.
About SeedBlink
SeedBlink is the all-in-one equity and investment platform that provides the infrastructure, financial services and network coverage for European tech companies and their stakeholders to access, manage and trade equity at every stage of growth.
With a comprehensive suite of products and services, SeedBlink streamlines investment processes and provides robust support throughout the equity lifecycle, from initial funding rounds through to mature investment opportunities and secondary markets.
More information at www.seedblink.com
About iBanFirst
Founded in 2016, iBanFirst has quickly established itself as the leading alternative for businesses that trade and carry out international payments. iBanFirst offers a next-generation cross-border payment experience that combines a powerful platform and the support of FX experts. With iBanFirst, executives and finance teams can get direct access to currency markets, receive, send and track payments and develop tailored hedging strategies.
With more than 350 employees in 10 European countries, processing a volume of transactions worth more than €1.4 billion each month, and listed by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest growing companies, iBanFirst became in less than 10 years a trusted partner for SMEs across borders.
iBanFirst has the financial backing of the French public investment bank (BpiFrance), European venture capital leaders (Elaia, Xavier Niel), and the American investment fund Marlin Equity Partners (more than 8 billion dollars of capital under management).
Regulated by the National Bank of Belgium as a payment institution, iBanFirst is authorised to operate throughout the European Union. Member of the SWIFT network and SEPA certified, iBanFirst holds AISP and PISP accreditations under PSD2.
PublishedAugust 12, 2024
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Tudor Goicea
Co-founder of Aqurate
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As a startup founder, I am happy to witness SeedBlink’s dedication to expanding their support for early-stage companies beyond funding, towards a healthy equity management via Nimity. A solution to help better navigate relations with stakeholders, employees and future investors is needed in Europe. Less admin work and bringing transparency to the cap table are immediate benefits I was able to test.
Delia Iliasa
Managing Partner
SanoPass
SeedBlink is a transparent solution that connects entrepreneurs with great business plans, with investors, at different stages in their development. It is a great tool for us, a democratization of access to funding, I would say.
Ioan Iacob
Founder
FLOWX.AI
We really loved the SeedBlink journey. We reached our fundraising goal within hours of launching. About 100 investors joined our vision and invested almost $2 million in FLOWX.AI through the Private Deal Room. At the same time, working with SeedBlink to prepare for the funding round was an excellent exercise for our entire team, and we received and felt the support from the SeedBlink team members who took on an advisory role.
Dan Vidrașcu
CEO
VOXA
SeedBlink made the (investment) process run smoothly. We appreciate all the support SeedBlink's professional team has provided.
Tinu Bosinceanu
Founder and CEO
Upgrade Education
It's important to look for and choose a platform that you resonate with, that shares your mission with, a platform & its people with which you feel you can have good working relationships. we got an excellent relationship going forward; we talked a lot and we were in touch on a lot of matters and I think this was important. Having people who believe in your idea is of great help.
Kimmo Rytkönen
Founder and CEO
Income
Running the financing round was like any other fundraising; we had to be active in our community as well as in SeedBlink's investor community. After the launch, everything happened very quickly, and SeedBlink organized several pitch events for investors, which we found very useful for the round momentum.
Svilen Rangelov
Founder and CEO
Dronamics
We immediately clicked with the SeedBlink team as their fundraising expertise was immediately obvious and their no-nonsense approach really appealed to us. After all, fundraising is only a means to an end, and we liked how the SeedBlink team was really focusing on supporting us and on getting things done.
Mihai Darzan
Founder
Procesio
Our main expectation has been to raise the amount we were aiming for, and both rounds launched on Seedblink exceeded our targets, so we’re very happy with that! Even though the launched funding campaigns have been purely crowdfunding rounds, we are thrilled to actually receive extra support from some of the investors, who have chosen to get involved and help us generate product awareness, whenever they can.
Catalin Mester
Founder
Voxa
I am recommending SeedBlink without hesitation, to every founder that raises capital, especially early-stage tech startups. SeedBlink is a crowd investment platform that will also provide their startup with visibility, for Angels and VCs.
Dragoș Iliescu
Founder and CEO
Brio
In the early stages, we have been funded by several early (angel) investors, and one and a half year ago through an equity crowdfunding campaign on SeedBlink. Of course, this impacted our growth in many positive ways, partly due to the cash influx that, evidently, was sorely needed, but in a larger part due to the fact that our responsibility towards our shareholders has become more stringent and explicit, becoming embodied in our market approach.
Costin Tudor
Co-founder and CEO
Undelucram
Given the accelerated growth we observed at the end of last year and the beginning of 2021, we want a new capitalization, quickly. This is a bridge round that we will use for one year, and the advantages that SeedBlink offers are the speed at which we were able to list for financing and the experience that we gain as a result of this public listing, similar to a listing on the stock exchange.
Diwaker Singh
Co-Founder & CEO
Crikle
As a platform that only serves technology ventures, SeedBlink can connect the start-up with more than just money. SeedBlink investors are primarily technocrats who understand the objectives of the fundraising company and are also able to post-funding contribute with business opportunities. The minimum investment threshold, and technology focus, differentiates SeedBlink from other fundraising platforms. A perfect fit for a technology start-up seeking intelligent funding.
Florin Stoian
Co-Founder & CEO
Milluu
SeedBlink boosted our brand exposure and facilitated the financial support we were seeking. Having a campaign on the platform allowed us not only to meet a team of professionals - that guided and helped us prepare the necessary materials - but also opened doors for increasing our brand awareness and have discussions with VCs & angel investors we have never reached before. This campaign gave us the encouragement we needed to push the product further, while the record-breaking fundraising (only 2 hours from the launch of the campaign!) was a great confirmation that our product is needed in this market and that we should continue innovating.
Raluca Jianu
CEO & Co-founder
Epic Visits
SeedBlink has created a vital ecosystem for startups at the beginning of their journey by equipping entrepreneurs with expertise, encouraging honest and sometimes uncomfortable but necessary discussions about risks and vulnerabilities through a suite of tools, and facilitating connections with investors who share the founders' vision and can contribute to their success. I have greatly appreciated the constant support of Eric and the entire team at all stages of the campaign. Thank you so much!
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