Former Mastercard president invests in Subaio's subscription management solution
Subaio’s white-label solution allowing banks’ customers to unsubscribe from their paid subscriptions landed an investment of €4 million, as the global Covid-19 pandemic has fueled a significant surge in the subscription economy.
What started off as a simple idea at a hackathon in 2016 to be able to cancel paid subscriptions like fitness memberships and phone plans with a click of a button, has turned into an increasingly growing enterprise. It caught the eye of a true paytech pioneer: Javier Perez, who recently stepped down from Mastercard. Javier has chosen Subaio as the very first investment of his new venture firm, Global PayTech Ventures (GPT), funding the subscription management scale-up with a €4 million series A investment to expand to new European markets:
“Subaio represents all the characteristics that we want to invest in. There is a massive market demand within the payments ecosystem and the team has the deep technical expertise and a great product that solves a problem for banks and consumers alike. That is why they have a European market-leading position within the subscription management space, and we will invest both capital, our payment expertise and network of global contacts to realize the company’s full potential,” says Javier Perez, Founder & Managing Partner at GPT, who stepped down as President of Mastercard Europe for two decades at the turn of the year.
Vote of confidence from ABN AMRO, Nordea and a paytech pioneer
Already trusted by eight banks in different markets including names like Nordea, ABN AMRO, and the Nordic market challenger Lunar, the investment from the ex-Mastercard executive is a true vote of confidence for the innovative scale-up, according to Subaio CEO and Co-founder, Thomas Laursen:
“The fintech sector is flush with funding. Thus, raising capital is not about how much you raise, but who you raise it from. It was imperative for us to receive a smart money investment that can propel us to the next level. Partnering up with a capacity such as Javier Perez and his team at GPT with their unique insight into the paytech industry is about getting knowledge and network into our company.”
Corona fuelling subscription surge
The funding from GPT will be earmarked to penetrate new European markets, grow the staff by 100 percent over the next 12-24 months and develop new features to the “unique machine learning with a human touch” software solution. That can take Subaio to the next level in the wake of the Corona pandemic, which has created a steep increase in the global subscription market – e.g. with Netflix:
“The average consumer has between 8-11 subscriptions. Thus, banks’ customer support resources managing claims to unwanted or unrecognised subscriptions are sharply rising. Sometimes, banks are advising clients to simply cut their cards and replace them with new ones to cancel a subscription, which is an expensive exercise costing 20-50 euro per contact, and therefore we aim to offer this cancellation button as a white label solution to the entire financial industry,” ends Thomas Laursen
