Ex-Tink employees raise €5m seed for startup Atlar

Following Visa’s acquisition of Tink for $1.8bn last year, three of the fintech’s team members set off to found their own startup – a bank payments platform for automated money movement.

Founded by Joel Nordström, Joel Wägmark, and Johannes Elgh in May, Stockholm-based startup Atlar has now raised a €5m seed round led by Index Ventures.

The round also saw participation from a number of angel investors, including Revolut CFO Mikko Salovaara,  N26 CFO Jan Kemper and former EVP of global sales at Adyen Thijn Lamers, as well as La Famiglia VC and Cocoa.

“While fintech tools have provided innovation for companies when it comes to accepting payments and ‘open banking’, similar developments have not arrived to enable payments flows that begin in a company’s own bank accounts,” Atlar wrote in a blog post.

“This is where we come in.”

With an estimated €260 trillion moving through European banks in payments, insurance premiums, deposits etc. every year, Atlar lets businesses connect to its platform via an API which then connects to their banks.

Businesses are then able to automate all their payment activities, including initiating and reconciling transfers as well as handing direct debits.

Atlar has already onboarded a number of early customers to its platform, including insurance company Lassie, payments company Mynt and German fintech lender Banxware.

“Having been through the pain of both building our own bank integrations and setting up a back office team, we were thrilled to partner with Atlar,” Banxware founder and COO Nicolas Kipp said.

“Their platform gives us exactly what we need in order to handle our bank payments, which lets us focus on our core business.”