Liberis lands £140m debt round led by Barclays

The new round of debt financing , led by Barclays, follows on from the bank's £34m investment in Liberis in December 2021.

 Embedded finance platform Liberis has secured £140m in new debt financing from Barclays Bank and BCI Finance.

The cash is provided via a new senior warehouse facility and will be used to expand the company's lending platform.

Liberis operates a global partner network that consists of e-commerce platforms such as Klarna and acquirers such as Barclaycard, Worldpay from FIS, Clover, and Global Payments. 

These partners integrate with Liberis to offer up to 1 million SMEs personalised revenue-based financing for up to £1m. Payments are linked to a company’s transactions, enabling them to pay for the funds more comfortably, in line with income.

Liberis’ platform applies machine learning to understand a customer’s risk profile and maximum funding options available to them, enabling higher volumes of origination. This has allowed them to fund almost $1bn to over 21,000 SMEs across the UK, Europe and the US, in over 50,000 transactions. 

Alongside support from Barclays and BCI Finance, Liberis is backed by investors including UK-based venture builder Blenheim Chalcot and US-based growth investor FTV Capital.

Barclays has led a £34m equity funding round for Liberis in Liberis In December 2021 while BCI has invested in Liberis since 2015.

The new round brings Liberis’ total funds raised to £350m, including over £80m in equity funding. “This is a great opportunity for Liberis to continue helping SME growth across the globe, especially in such uncertain times that have been brought upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic. This funding will be crucial to supporting our partners in funding their SME customers to close the ever-expanding global funding gap,” said Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis.