iwoca

iwoca
Type of site
 Financial Services
Available in English
Owner Privately Held
Created by
  • Christoph Rieche
  • James Dear
Slogan(s) Instant Working Capital
Website www.iwoca.co.uk
Registration Required
Launched October 5, 2011 (2011-10-05)
Current status Active

iwoca Ltd. is an online FinTech company based in London. It offers credit facilities to small businesses trading in the UK, Poland, Spain, and Germany via an automated lending platform. It also partners with Alibaba to offer a trade finance product, e-Credit Line, to businesses purchasing from Chinese suppliers.[1]

CEO Christoph Rieche and CTO James Dear founded iwoca in October 2011 and the company started trading in March 2012. iwoca initially offered credit exclusively to e-commerce businesses. However, in April 2014 it expanded its criteria and started to lend to all types of small businesses.

iwoca provides loans of up to £100,000 and automatically assesses risk based on data taken directly from eBay, Amazon, PayPal, Sage Pay, business bank accounts and other online and offline platforms.[2] This follows a similar model to that used by Kabbage in the United States. A 3% monthly interest rate and maximum loan term of 12 months are typical.[3]

At the launch of iwoca Spain in December 2014, iwoca announced that it had lent almost £30 million across 5,000 transactions in the UK and Poland.[4] In July 2015 it was reported to have seen 250% year-on-year growth in issuance.[5]

Investors

iwoca is funded by private investors and venture capitalists.[2] In January 2014 it announced that it had raised £5 million in investment from Global Founders Capital and Redline Capital Management, to be used for UK and European expansion.[6] In July 2015 it announced that it had raised $20 million equity from investors including CommerzVentures and Acton Capital in its Series B round.[7]

Awards

In 2012 iwoca won a Smarta 100 award as one of the most disruptive small businesses in the UK.[8] Since then they have been selected by UK Startup Awards as a Top Twenty UK Startup[9] and won the Wired Money Startup Pitch.[10] In May 2015 iwoca was selected as the Alternative Lender of the Year for Commercial Credit in the Credit Today awards.[11]

References

  1. ↑ "Alibaba partners alternative lenders to open doors to China", 11 March 2015. Retrieved on 3 August 2015.
  2. 1 2 Business Club. "Iwoca's capital way to assist eBay traders". Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-11-08.
  3. ↑ "iwoca UK homepage". iwoca. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
  4. ↑ "iwoca launches in Spain to meet demand for small business financing", 18 December 2014. Retrieved on 3 August 2015.
  5. ↑ "London fintech startup iwoca just got $20 million from German investors, 30 July 2015. Retrieved on 3 August 2015.
  6. ↑ Catherine Shu. "E-Commerce Business Lender iwoca Raises $8.2M To Expand In The UK And Europe | Techcrunch". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2014-07-11.
  7. ↑ "iwoca raises $20 million to accelerate growth", 30 July 2015. Retrieved on 3 August 2015.
  8. ↑ Mike. "Iwoca - Smarta 100 Winner 2012 | Smarta 100". Smarta.com. Retrieved 2012-11-08.
  9. ↑ Jeffrey. "iwoca - Startups". Startups.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-10-29.
  10. ↑ Jeffrey. "Meet Iwoca, winner of Wired Money's Startup Pitch Stage". Wired. Retrieved 2013-10-29.
  11. ↑ "Credit Today Awards - 2015 Winners", 12 May 2015. Retrieved on 3 August 2015.

External links

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