Backbase, Dutch unicorn, wants to engage the bank customer

First contribution in almost 20 years of operation valued business at 2.5 billion euros

In the fierce competition between financial institutions, a Dutch unicorn wants to help banks and fintechs to engage customers – and is capitalized on it. Backbase, which operates in the category known as ‘engagement banking’, has been doing this for almost two decades and already in 22 countries. In Brazil, it started operating this year and has just closed a global fundraising of 120 million euros.

The first contribution in nearly 20 years of operation comes from a single investor, the New York private equity firm Motive Partners. The round valued Backbase at €2.5 billion. The company, founded in Amsterdam by Jouk Pleiter, closed last year with revenue of 200 million euros.

In restricting liquidity for startups, Backbase wanted to ensure cash so as not to hold back growth in products, partnerships and people. The company’s business is the “re-architecting” of customer relationships, providing software for companies to structure and leverage the huge volume of data they capture from users and transactions.

The model is white label, that is, developed with each bank – there are more than 150 financial institutions in the client portfolio, such as BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank, using the solution for sales orchestration, such as loans and refinancing, or app structuring, for example.

“Today, the bank needs to have several teams with different knowledge to understand the entire patchwork of services provided. When Backbase enters, all you need to do is train the team to understand the platform”, says Vini Lima, responsible for the company’s operations in Brazil. “The bank can worry less about the hardware and, together with Backbase, focus on the customer experience.”

The role of structuring in the national territory is already a familiar task for Lima, who did the same work at GoDaddy, hosting websites, and at Google, when he worked at Google Workspace — an area of ​​the technology giant focused on companies.

Source: Value Pipeline