Ken Villum Klausen (centre) Lars Bo Thomsen (right)/Lunar
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Lunar moves into payments space with latest acquisition
Just over a year after first launching its business accounts, half of all newly started businesses in Denmark opened a Lunar account.
With its latest acquisition, Danish challenger bank Lunar has taken one small step for payments and one giant leap for business banking.
The digital bank has acquired payment gateway Paylike to launch its own one-step checkout solution for its business customers.
Paylike, which Lunar acquired for an undisclosed amount, handles more than €100m of transactions every year and will help the bank to bolster its current business banking offering.
“When we founded Paylike in 2015, we were on a mission to make it simpler and faster for businesses to receive payments,” Lars Bo Thomsen, COO and co-founder of Paylike, said.
“Back then, setting up a payment solution could take weeks. We launched a modern alternative that only took minutes. Now we are taking a big step forward by offering payments directly to the business banking account. That’s fintech at its best.”
According to the digital bank, 50 per cent of new businesses in Denmark sign up for an account with Lunar, and its new checkout solution will undoubtedly attract even more small businesses.
“The new level of the business is moving Lunar beyond banking and is tailored to the defensive Nordic infrastructure,” Ken Villum Klausen, founder and CEO of Lunar, said.
“Building a two-sided marketplace for payments connecting consumers and businesses will make life easier for everyone. Payments will be at the forefront of our next growth phase.”
The acquisition has helped Lunar launch its own checkout solution, Lunar Checkout, which gives its retail customers a safe and secure payment method for online shopping.
As it stands, Lunar now serves more than 350,000 customers—both for consumer and business banking—across the Nordics.
Lunar’s acquisition of Paylike is thanks to the €210m Series D funding round it bagged in July of this year.
The digital bank is planning to use the cash to expand throughout the Nordics and scout potential M&A opportunities, just like Paylike.
In April of this year, Lunar took its first steps into the world of M&A by acquiring Lendify, Sweden’s largest loan marketplace.
Through the acquisition, the Nordic challenger hopes to grow its consumer loan offering and expand its operations in Sweden and beyond.
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