Funding Circle founder and ex-CEO launches new payments fintech

Samir Desai, a co-founder and long term CEO of Funding Circle until the start of 2022, has raised a $30m round to launch a new fintech Super Payments.

Desai, according to a report in Sky News, has backing from VCs including Accel, an investor in Funding Circle, and Local Globe, an early Facebook investor, as well as Union Ventures.

Funding Circle was co-founded in 2010 by James Meekings, Andrew Mullinger and Desai, who is still a director of the business with a sizeable equity stake, as a peer-to-peer lender focused on the SME market.

Over the past twelve years, it has evolved into severalnew areas and recently fully dropped its P2P lending arm for retail investors after a two-year freeze during the pandemic. With the launch of its ‘Flexipay’ product, a type of BNPL platform for SMEs, Funding Circle has also moved closer to the payments space in recent years and currently has deals to handle payments with both GoCardless and Stripe.

Little is known about the business model of Super Payments, with no information regarding the business registered on Companies House and no internet or social media presence yet, but a source told Sky News that the company would not be competing with Funding Circle directly.

"The board discussed, and are supportive of, Samir's desire to explore a new business venture, whilst continuing as a committed long-term shareholder and valued member of Funding Circle's board," a spokesperson for Funding Circle told Sky News.