Milan-HQ’d fintech Fabrick has raised €40m from Mastercard and other unnamed investors, according to a person familiar with the matter.
It’s the first time that Fabrick has taken external funding since it launched in 2018 as a spinout from Italian bank conglomerate Sella Group. It remains part of Sella Group.
Mastercard and the other investors are gaining a minority stake in the business, alongside the other unnamed investors, the person tells Sifted. Until now, the company’s main shareholders have been Sella Group and Fabrick's two cofounders — CEO Paolo Zaccardi and deputy CEO Marco Casartelli.
Mastercard and Fabrick have been working together since 2019 and announced that they’d “expanded” their partnership on Wednesday. Fabrick provides the API for companies across different sectors to integrate payments, banking and insurance services without having to build the infrastructure themselves. Current clients include food giant Nestlé, telecom TIM and French bank Crédit du Nord. With the Mastercard partnership, it’s doubling down on the payments part of its offering.
Mastercard has invested in some 28 European fintechs, according to Dealroom. Its previous investments include Swedish payments unicorn iZettle, which was acquired by Paypal in 2018, UK buy now, pay later fintech Divido and B2B banking software company Pollinate.
It’s not uncommon for open banking and payments companies to have corporates on their cap tables. Such investments can give established companies access to startups’ tech products as well as open up the potential for acquisitions further down the line.
Visa has been a prolific strategic investor in European fintechs, too: it counts open banking rival Truelayer, as well as Klarna, Solaris and Tink (which it acquired for €1.8bn in 2021), among its bets in the region.
