Tymit raises £23m from Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group for BNPL pivot

The Frasers Group, the listed owner of high street brands such as Sports Direct, Jack Wills and House of Fraser founded by Mike Ashley, has invested £23m in challenger credit fintech Tymit.

Following this Series A funding round, which was conducted with an undisclosed valuation, Frasers Group has become a ‘major minority’ investor in Tymit, which has now seen a total of £33m of investment to date.

“This strategic investment into Tymit will allow the Group the ability to continue to pioneer the retail sector and later expand into the Buy Now, Pay Later market – enhancing the consumer experience and providing flexibility across the board,” A Spokesperson for Frasers Group said.  

The CEO and co-founder of Tymit Martin Magnone told AltFi the company had started a pivot from its purely direct-to-consumer model, which has landed it 40,000 users paying a monthly subscription, to also include a B2B2C arm one year ago. 

“[We have in Frasers Group] such an amazing, strong partner…We have great plans together. The context of that, which is not, I would say doesn't happen too often is that you have very good synergies between our companies.

This B2B2C strategy aims to help merchants launch their own ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) lending programmes under their own brand. It allows merchants to benefit from the financing channel as well as ‘owning’ the customer and the data insights.

"We made the decision about a year ago to switch from a pure B2C model to a B2B2C...The challenge has always been distribution. How do you get it into the hands of people without breaking the bank, and spending hundreds of millions in marketing?" 

“Now by partnering with the likes of Frasers Group where they already have amazing brands and distribution power, we can stand up programmes that do what our technology does, which is an amazing lending experiences through their distribution channels."