Paris-based fintech Younited has reached unicorn status after breaking through the $1 billion valuation mark following a $63 million raise from its main shareholders including Goldman Sachs, Eurazeo and Bpifrance.   

The 13-year-old fintech, which operates in five European countries, provides a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that utilizes data from APIs and open banking to make informed lending decisions to offer instant credit, according to a release.  

Younited will use the new funding, which closed Dec. 13, to continually update its systems and build its partner network, which allows merchants and financial institutions to use its technology in a white-labelled form to power their own instant credit offerings, according to the release.  

“While Younited’s historical [direct-to-consumer] activity is profitable in 2022 across all of our five countries, this new fundraising will allow us to continue investing in our disruptive technology as well as in the deployment of our second activity (partnerships),” Charles Egly, co-founder and Group CEO at Younited, said in the release.  

Acin raises $24M in series B

Operational risk fintech Acin received $24 million in series B funding backed by JPMorgan, Citi, BNP Paribas, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group. 

London-based Acin plans to use the funds to advance its product development, investing in banks and existing clients, according to a release.

“This investment demonstrates that the market shares our vision of transforming risk management with data across the entire financial sector,” Paul Ford, founder and chief executive of Acin, said in a release. “This strategic consortium is a testament to the shared vision of banks and a strong signal that there is a shared commitment to addressing operational risk from leaders within the industry.” 

The company uses data analytics to empower banks to digitize their operational and non-financial risk analysis to make financial institutions (FIs) safer and more efficient, according to the release. 

Acin has raised a total of $36 million over two funding rounds since its founding in 2018, according to Crunchbase. 

Bling Europe secures $3.7M in seed funding

Money card and children’s financial education app Bling Europe announced that it has collected $3.7 million in seed financing to offer an expanded range of products for family finances. 

The Paris-based fintech will use the capital to offer an additional suite of savings and money management products to its customers, according to a release. 

“It’s a challenging time to build a consumer fintech, but we just delivered viral growth and monetized from day zero,” Bling co-founder and Chief Executive Nils Feigenwinter said in the release. “Our numbers speak for themselves.” 

The company was founded in 2019 and has raised a total of $7.7 million, according to Crunchbase. 

OneBanx nabs $1.3M 

London-based shared bank branch operator OneBanx has secured $1.3 million in funding through investment platform Crowdcube. 

The fintech has developed a low-cost, pop-up kiosk that could replace bank branches in communities where physical locations have closed, according to a release. The funding will help develop thousands of kiosks throughout the U.K. in underbanked areas, the company said. 

“We have had amazing support from our existing shareholders, but as a business rooted in serving communities, we wanted to extend our shareholder base to include more communities and partners with a real stake in our business as we expand and grow,” Duncan Cockburn, founder and chief executive of OneBanx, said in the release. 

Additional reporting by Neil Ainger. 

Editor’s note: All dollar amounts listed in U.S. dollars. 

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