SumUp announces new funding, led by fintech venture capitalist Life.SREDA

Double-digit million dollar investment will position SumUp to expand its technological leadership role and further support the launch of its proprietary Chip & PIN terminal

London – August 15, 2014

Mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) company SumUp has today announced an investment led by fintech venture capital firm Life.SREDA. The round was closed with the participation of the existing investors including Groupon, BBVA Ventures and other renowned venture capital investors. The investment follows last year’s double-digit million dollar Series B financing round.

SumUp will use the new funds to expand its technological leadership position by further building out its end-to-end payment solution, which encompasses a proprietary and certified payments gateway, proprietary hardware and operations systems. Furthermore the funds will be dedicated to propelling international traction of SumUp’s recently launched Chip & PIN card terminal “PIN+”, the first proprietary mobile Chip & PIN device of an mPOS provider in Europe.

Daniel Klein, CEO, SumUp, explains: “We are excited to bring on a new investor that has a deep knowledge of the global fintech space. Life.SREDA is building an eco-system of companies disrupting a wide range of financial services and products. We are happy to become part of this network and are looking forward to realizing synergies with some of their portfolio companies in the future. At the same time we are reassured by our existing investors’ continued support of our vision to become the global mPOS leader.”

Alex Ivanov, CFO, Life.SREDA says: “No other mPOS player in the world has focused so much on disrupting the actual technology behind the revolutionary mPOS business model. We are impressed by SumUp’s end-to-end payments capabilities, especially their recently launched proprietary Chip & PIN terminal. SumUp is a great addition to our portfolio and we can’t wait to support SumUp in their efforts to build value added services on top of their existing offering.”

SumUp today also announced a change to the executive team. Stefan Jeschonnek and Dr. Jan Deepen, who founded SumUp together with Daniel Klein and Marc-Alexander Christ and have so far held the positions of Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) respectively, are stepping down from their executive functions at SumUp.

Daniel Klein, co-founder and CEO, comments: “SumUp is serving merchants in 14 countries in Western Europe, Russia and Brazil, and we are growing fast. We could have never achieved this without Stefan leading product, marketing and customer service, and Jan leading our international expansion, commercial growth and business development. I am profoundly thankful for having had the opportunity to found and run this company together with both of them.”

Stefan Jeschonnek, co-founder and CPO, comments: “We have come a long way since we first started SumUp. We have grown from a bootstrapped startup in sub-let office to a global technology company serving hundreds of thousands of small merchants worldwide. We are now entering a new phase in our development and we felt that this was good point in time for us to make a change to the executive team. This new phase comes with a new strategy and we have agreed within the founding team that one of us should be fully empowered to run the company and that Daniel is the best-suited one of us to execute this strategy.”

Dr. Jan Deepen, co-founder and CCO, comments: “We have built an outstanding team in Europe, Russia and Brazil over the last three years and achieved incredible successes together. With this team in place and having laid the groundwork in terms of both, the product and technology as well as commercial growth, we are confident that Daniel and the team will now take SumUp to the next level.

Mr. Jeschonnek and Mr. Deepen will remain shareholders and active supporters of the company.

– ENDS –

About SumUp

SumUp is the leading mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) company in Europe and is set to empower the world to accept card payments.

With SumUp, merchants can accept credit and debit cards, using their smartphones or tablets, in a simple, secure and cost-effective way. SumUp's mobile card acceptance solution is built on proprietary end-to-end EMV payment technology, terminal hardware and mobile applications. SumUp only charges a fee of 1.95% per card transaction in the UK.

The company is authorised as a Payment Institution by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and is Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) and PCI-DSS certified, ensuring that payments are processed in accordance with the highest security standards.

Launched in August 2012, SumUp has expanded into 14 countries, including the UK, Germany, Russia and Brazil. The company has major offices in London, Berlin, Sofia, Moscow, and São Paulo.

More information: https://sumup.co.uk/

About Life.SREDA

Life.SREDA is an international venture capital firm focusing on investments in FinTech mobile and Internet projects.

Life.SREDA’s strategy is determined by the deep understanding of the rapidly growing FinTech 2.0 industry and the narrow investment focus. The company believes that "The Next Big Thing" is the combination of the past decade’s global trends, such as Social & Mobile with innovative and disruptive FinTech ideas. Life.SREDA currently operates in the U.S., Western and Eastern European Markets, providing mostly seed and early stage venture funding. Life.SREDA has strategic partnerships with Anthemis Group and Finovate.

Life.SREDA’s portfolio: http://lifesreda.com/portfolio