From left to right: Raffaele Terrone CFO, Simone Mancini CEO, Johnny Mitresvki CTO, Pingki Houang, General Manager
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Italy’s postal service makes BNPL play with $27m stake in Klarna rival Scalapay
Scalapay was founded and launched in 2019 to concentrate on BNPL’s growth in the fashion sector and has seen rapid growth since.
Buy now, pay later startup Scalapay has raised a $27m investment from Poste Italiane, in a Series B extension.
The group, which handles Italy postal services, has been vocal since the pandemic about the need to expand its remit into the digital sphere. It has long been one of the largest payment card issuers in Europe but also has financial, insurance, payments, telco, and digital services it offers to households, businesses, and public administrations such as tax collection.
The 160-year old company has 12,800 post offices, 122 thousand employees, €582bn in total financial assets, and about 35 million customers, according to the company.
In 2020, its Poste Pay division saw €737m in revenues with digital payments up 10 per cent and ecommerce transactions soaring 60 per cent.
The pandemic prompted it to play an increasing role in infrastructure in Italy, according to a report in the Financial Times last year, with plans to invest €3.1bn up to 2025 with the majority focusing on the company’s digital transformation.
The investment in Scalapay is an extension of Scalapay's $497m Series B fundraising round, which was announced in February 2022.
This funding will go towards the continued expansion and development of Scalapay's world-class team, product development, and brand building. Scalapay is also planning on expanding its executive team and company board. The additional funding brings Scalapay's total funding to date to $727m.
Scalapay was founded and launched in 2019 and now has 3,000 merchant partners is active in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands and Austria.
Scalapay was founded by Simone Mancini and Johnny Mitrevski. They were joined in the early stages by Raffaele Terrone, Daniele Tessari and Mirco Mattevi as part of the founding team.
Its BNPL offerings include three options for customers (Pay in 3, Pay in 4, and Pay Later) in which customers are not required to make any payments upfront, and can instead opt to pay in three installments, four installments, or entirely after 14 days.
