Tencent buys stake in UK fintech Previse

Tencent Holdings, the Chinese tech giant, has taken a stake in Previse, adding to its list of investments in British fintechs.

An arm of Tencent is leading a Series B funding round that will raise just over £10m, according to Sky News, which will value the company at around £65m.

The round would add to the fintech startup's raise of $11m in 2020 led by Reffknot Investments and Mastercard, which brought its total raised to $21.8m.

Run by co-founder and CEO Paul Christensen, the company focuses on helping suppliers get faster payments.

The London-based financial services and technology company says its aim is to “turbo-charge B2B commerce by using buyer/supplier trading data”.

Tencent, which owns China’s biggest messaging app WeChat, has made a series of investments in British and European fintechs over the past 18 months. 

Most recently, it became a new investor in the French ‘buy now, pay later’ platform Alma as part of a €210m funding round in February.

It also invested $100m in UK neobank Monzo’s Series H round, which brought the company’s value to $4.5bn at the start of the year.

The internet giant, which became the first Asian company to be valued at over $500bn in 2017, also led a round for Scalable Capital last year, adding to its existing portfolio with Nubank,N26 and more than 600 other companies.