Investors Enticed By The As-A-Service Boom

Software-as-a-service saw a boom back around 2015, and the X-as-a-Service space hasn’t looked back. This week we see startups from the software-, banking- and data-as-a-service ranks landing new funding for their B2B solutions. Across the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, these startups raised a collective $76 million, with a secretive U.K. banking-as-a-service company emerging at the top of this week’s B2B Venture Capital roundup.

Software-As-A-Service

Dealflo

Dealflo, based in the U.K., has developed software to help companies manage financial agreements to ensure legal enforceability and compliance. On Monday (Feb. 27), the startup announced more than $12 million in new funding led by Holtzbrinck Ventures; backers from Notion Capital and Frog Capital also participated, reports said. Dealflo automates the financial agreement process on a cloud platform and said it will use its latest funding to help expand into new geographic markets. The company will also invest in its existing product roadmap, it added.

Sensibill

With nearly $13 million in Series A financing, Canada’s Sensibill will look to expand its digital receipt management technology for banks and customers of their mobile apps across new geographic markets. The company, which announced the funding Thursday (Mar. 2), said it is also looking into artificial intelligence technology to augment its services. Information Venture Partners led the investment round, which also saw participation from OpenText Enterprise Apps Fund and Operative Capital, among others. Analysts highlighted the company’s more-than-$10 million funding round, a rarity for a Canadian FinTech; with fresh backing, Sensibill said it hopes to enter into the U.S.’, the U.K.’s and Australian markets.

Banking-As-A-Service

ClearBank

As the U.K.’s first new clearing bank in more than 250 years, ClearBank will aim to disrupt the banking-as-a-service space and just raised $31 million to help the cause. Investors at PPF Group and CCFI Ventures, along with the company’s management team, provided the funding, announced Tuesday (Feb. 28). Launched by Worldpay founder Nick Ogden, ClearBank will look to help FCA-regulated banks and FinTechs to connect into payment systems and other banking technologies. The company aims to fully launch later this year, reports said.

Data-As-A-Service

Urjanet

This U.S. startup operates in a niche market: Urjanet provides SMEs and larger corporates to automate the capture of utility data for accounting and billing purposes as well as to ensure energy reporting compliance. The company’s data-as-a-service solution links with about 4,000 utilities across the world so that businesses can access line-item information from their electric, gas, water and other utility bills. Investors from Oak HC/FT led a $20 million Series C funding round for the startup. The funding, announced Thursday (Mar. 2), will go toward continuing global expansion as well as the development of new data applications that can help the financial services industry use this type of information for underwriting and lending purposes.