Exclusive: Chetwood Financial acquires banking-as-a-service partner Yobota

The close partnership between banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider Yobota and digital bank Chetwood Financial is today becoming significantly closer.

AltFi can exclusively reveal that Chetwood has now acquired Yobota for an undisclosed amount.

Yobota and Chetwood have long been close partners, both co-founded in 2016 by Chetwood COO Mark Jenkinson and with Yobota providing the core banking tech for all of Chetwood’s products to date.

Following the acquisition, Yobota will continue to operate as a standalone brand, serving its existing clients and with strict confidentiality between those clients and Chetwood.

Chetwood meanwhile will continue to operate all its consumer-facing products including Wave, LiveLend, SmartSave and BetterBorrow.

Combining the businesses will result in greater operational efficiencies for Chetwood, and allow Yobota to expand into a full end-to-end BaaS offering with credit and pricing capabilities.

“Chetwood and Yobota have common shareholders and shared purpose, and there is pre-established trust from knowing and working together,” said Chetwood’s CEO and founder Andy Mielczarek.

“Clients of both firms will benefit from our complementary offerings that will enable responsive, dynamic products and solutions not yet seen in the industry.”

Following the deal, Yobota’s CEO and co-founder Ammar Akhtar is stepping down to “pursue new challenges”, with Mielczarek acting as CEO across the group.

”It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Ammar, whose energy, experience and creativity were essential to launching Chetwood and Yobota, as well as driving many of our subsequent successes,” added Mielczarek.

Since 2016 Chetwood has raised over £160m in debt and equity funding, with US hedge fund Elliott Management being its long-time backer.