Yesterday, FinLeap portfolio company PAIR Finance announced a majority investment from Pollen Street Capital. Founding investor finleap will retain a minority position in the company. FinLeap is an investment in Shackleton’s Victoria Fund.
PAIR Finance is a high-growth, digital first collections platform offering unique collections technology based on artificial intelligence and behavioural research, aiming to create a more efficient payment process that prioritises customer experience alongside collection rates and long-term customer retention for clients.
Stephan Stricker (CEO) founded the company in 2016, together with finleap, with the aim of transforming the large debt collection market in Europe. Since then, PAIR Finance has grown rapidly to more than 350 active clients across all major industry verticals. Today PAIR Finance is the clear market leader in digital debt collections and receivables management in Germany. Pollen Street’s investment will support PAIR Finance to continue its strong growth trajectory, expand into new geographies and grow its customer base.
The transaction represents finleap’s second successful exit this year, following the merger of its portfolio company, Penta, with France-based competitor, Qonto, in July 2022.
finleap has a longstanding relationship with the PAIR Finance management team and is looking forward to supporting the next phase of the company’s exceptional growth story, alongside its new majority investor.
Evercore acted as sole financial advisor to the selling shareholders.
“The collaboration between PAIR Finance and finleap has been always close and very constructive, since the inception of the company in 2016. finleap supported us with many administrative and organizational topics right at the start, and opened its large network continuously throughout the years. For me, this is a great example of a working and consistent partnership with a company builder. I am very much looking forward to continuing to work with Michael and Ramin, and to take PAIR Finance’s growth to the next level together with Pollen Street as a new majority investor.”
Stephan Stricker, Founder and CEO of PAIR Finance
Michael Hock, former Chairman of PAIR Finance and Managing Director finleap, said:
“PAIR Finance is a tremendous success story for the German start-up scene. The great team around CEO Stephan Stricker has written an impressive growth story, leading to one of the largest fintech exits in Germany this year. It is a very good example that the close cooperation between entrepreneurial founding team and active investor deliver outstanding results. We have been a proud shareholder and supporter from day one – and are committed to the next chapter with Pollen Street Capital on board.”
With the finleap portfolio showing clear early signs of success, founder Ramin Niroumand is onto the next start-up venture. At the beginning of 2022, Ramin and Michael Hock, finleap’s Managing Director, founded embedded/capital, an early stage VC investing in fintechs across Europe.
“We continue doing what we love most: helping founders in the most critical stages to succeed. The Berlin fintech ecosystem has made incredible progress over the last few years, and it’s exciting that the new generation of fintechs can build on the platforms created. For us, embedded/capital is the logical next step to coach this generation of founders.”
Ramin Niroumand, Founder of finleap and embedded/capital
