HUBUC gets YC backing
Embedded finance is set to reshape the banking, business, and fintech landscape. In fact, it represents a market opportunity projected to be worth $7 trillion by the year 2030. So it’s no surprise that investors are looking for the next big firms – and people – to invest in.
Two such contenders are Hasan Nawaz and Ignacio Javierre, who co-founded HUBUC in 2019. Their platform enables customers to build and deploy a complete set of financial services capabilities into their website, app or product, all through one API.
While HUBUC sets out to remove complexity, the journey to building the company was less straightforward.
Back in 2018, Hasan and Ignacio were co-creating another venture, the Brex of Europe. But they quickly realized the limitations of current banking-as-a-service providers, which lack comprehensive capabilities and therefore tended to be equipped to serve only early stage startups.
Today, HUBUC is rapidly gaining market traction. Most recently, the banking-as-a-service platform has secured a place in the world’s most prestigious programme for start-ups, Y Combinator.
Unlike its BaaS brethren, HUBUC is directly connected to multiple banking partners and acts as an aggregator to payment and card schemes, such as SEPA, BACS, VISA, and Mastercard. This is all offered through one API, in one contract, and thereby simplifies the process for companies seeking to embed financial services.
Because HUBUC takes care of all the regulatory requirements and manages compliance risk, it allows its customers to get their services to market in less time and with fewer resources.
The highly competitive Y Combinator program promises to take entrepreneurs through their paces and connects them with other teams and potential investors, the co-founders aspire to cement their plans for growth and international expansion.
Hasan Nawaz, the CEO of HUBUC says: “It’s a huge accolade for us to join such a renowned incubator, and hope to follow in the footsteps of its successful alumni. The embedded finance opportunity is set to grow and with the added firepower of Y-Combinator, we have the capabilities to help realise its full potential.
“As well as absorbing as much knowledge as possible, we plan to use the investment funds to build our compliance team, further product development and expand the sales and marketing teams in preparation of international expansion.”
If forecasts prove accurate, embedded finance will be twice the combined value of the world’s top 30 banks today.
And HUBUC has been recognised for its potential to scale its services because it contains all the building blocks to enable businesses to integrate financial services into their products, in a single API.
“To be selected to join the Y Combinator is a significant step in HUBUC’s development. For the past 3 years, we have launched together with Hasan multiple fintech solutions. The fact that YC has recognized that journey as part of the success of HUBUC today, is incredibly rewarding for us”
“We hope this experience will turn into an opportunity to accelerate the growth our company so we can bring the benefits of embedded finance, such as improving payment methods, easy bank account opening, currency exchange and better analytics to name a few, to even more businesses.” says Ignacio Javierre, COO of HUBUC.
Y Combinator, which has invested in some 2,000 startups since 2005, counts companies such as Airbnb, Stripe, Instacart and Dropbox among its alumni, while the combined valuation of its companies is over $300B.
With over 18,000 applications per year and just a few hundreds being accepted, HUBUC became a member of a truly premium tech community.
With strong interest from the investors and YC backing, HUBUC will use the additional funds to invest further into building its compliance team, which is the foremost priority. By expanding its best-in-breed compliance team, HUBUC will help all its customers to manage compliance risks and navigate in a complex regulatory environment with ease.
The additional capital will also help further product development and expand the sales and marketing teams, in preparation of international expansion.
About HUBUC
HUBUC is an embedded financial services provider that allows businesses to access all services through one platform, with the ability to go live within weeks. HUBUC enables clients to embed the financial services they need to grow their business, including card issuance, five-minute bank account opening and KYC processes in 54 countries, IBAN / VAN issuance, money transfer, FX services, dynamic spending controls and real-time notifications. HUBUC also manages full regulatory compliance and on-boarding complexities on behalf of its business partners. It can onboard customers within days - significantly reducing additional time and cost investments required and enabling them to bring payment capabilities to market faster.
About Y Combinator
Y Combinator is a startup fund based in Mountain View, CA. In 2005, Y Combinator developed a new model of startup funding. Twice a year they invest a small amount of money in a large number of startups. The startups move to Silicon Valley for 3 months, and the YC partners work closely with each company to get them into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors. Each batch culminates in Demo Day, when the startups present their companies to a carefully selected audience of investors. Y Combinator has invested in over 3,000 companies including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit, Instacart, Docker and Gusto. The combined valuation of YC companies is over $300B.
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