Lithuanian FinTech kevin Nets $65M for A2A Infrastructure

Lithuanian fintech kevin., which provides an A2A payment infrastructure intended to replace card transactions, has gotten Series A funding for $65 million, a report says.

The funding comes after the seed round six months ago, when the company got $10 million.

The report says kevin.’s funding is now at $77 million.

Since that seed round, the company has grown its team to over 170 employees working from 30 countries, with the number of employees set to double, almost, by 2023.

This round was led by Accel. Other investors included Eurazeo and several existing ones like OTB Ventures, Speedinvest, OpenOcean, and Global Paytech Ventures.

There were also other investors like Harry Stebbings, Founder of 20VC, Ilkka Paananen, CEO & Co-founder of Supercell, and ex-Venmo CEO Amitabh Jhawar. Other angels also participated.

In news of the region, PYMNTS wrote about the FinTech-friendly climate in Lithuania while reporting on the state of emergency in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Read more: FinTech-Friendly Lithuania Raises Alarms After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

The country had been doing well, attempting to craft an ecosystem to attract FinTechs even though it had less than 3 million people.

The company had 55 FinTechs in 2014, and raised that up to 230 in 2020.

The U.K. leaving the European Union was a catalyst for this in some ways, with many FinTechs in the U.K. moving their work to Lithuania because the country facilitated the provision of electronic money institution licenses.

This let the companies provide services in Europe, which was why Revolut, initially formed in the U.K., applied for a banking license in Lithuania.

Dimitri Gugunava of SumUp said Lithuania had been in “the right place at the right time,” and this would be hard for other countries to match.

“Lithuania is ahead now in building a self-reinforcing ecosystem of attracting more FinTech — which attracts more talent, which attracts more FinTech investors. It will be hard, just by copying the model, to achieve the same results,” he said.