Australia-headquartered digital payment technology provider Zip has agreed to buy the remaining shares of a portfolio company, Twisto Payments, a Czech Republic-based peer backed by insurer Uniqa, for about €89m ($68.8m).
Founded in 2013, Twisto has built a buy-now-pay-later app that helps users settle e-commerce bills on the 15th of the month after purchase. Buyers can also divide bigger amounts into instalments or postpone the payments for a later date.
The acquisition is set to complete in the fourth quarter of this year and represents Zip’s expansion strategy for Europe, having entered into the United States and the UK earlier this year.
Zip and Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI)’s Elevator Ventures subsidiary co-led a $19.5m round for Twisto in January 2021, investing alongside another financial services firm ING Bank, Uniqa, Finch Capital and Velocity Capital.
ING and Uniqa had participated in a $15.6m series B round in mid-2019 through respective venture capital arms ING Ventures and Uniqa Ventures. ING’s Poland-based ING Bank Śląski unit also took part together with Finch Capital and Velocity Capital.
The company received $9.9m in equity funding and $2.5m of debt from undisclosed investors in 2018, which came in the wake of a $5.9m series A round a year earlier led by ING Ventures and backed by Uniqa Ventures.
Twisto’s earliest funding was a pre-seed round of undisclosed size from Enern Investments at an unspecified date, and it also counted Partners Financial Services, Milton and Cezary Smorszczewski as shareholders.
Image courtesy of Twisto.
