The number of unicorns in Europe, i.e. unlisted companies with a valuation of more than one billion dollars, continues to grow.

The newest member is London-based fintech Payhawk.

The company provides software for managing expenses for small and medium-sized businesses.

The financial start-up has now raised a further 100 million dollars in a Series B financing round, the round has been expanded to a total of 215 million dollars.

Antonia Mannweiler

Editor in Business.

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The company's valuation has thus climbed to one billion dollars.

US venture capitalist Lightspeed Venture Partners led the latest round.

The big tech investor has provided capital to companies like Snap and Grab in the past.

Investors Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures and Jigsaw VC have recently come on board.

German market in view

The start-up Payhawk, which was only founded in 2018, offers companies, among other things, their own company credit cards that make it easier to bill and digitize expenses.

But companies can also set spending limits and track what the money was spent on in real time.

Evidence would no longer have to be collected.

Expenses should also be reimbursed more quickly.

Payhawk also has the German market in mind and is targeting larger companies with 10,000 or more employees.

The need for such solutions is huge, especially in Germany, said Payhawk boss Hristo Borisov.

There are companies whose processes have not seen an update for 20 years.

Companies pay EUR 149 per month to use Payhawk, and an additional EUR 9 is added for each company credit card.

Customers include Lotto24, ATU and the food delivery service Flink.

The market for digital expense reports continues to heat up.

Payhawk raised $115 million last November.

And the European competition is also pushing into the German market with plenty of capital.

Finance start-up Pleo, which offers small and medium-sized businesses a one-stop solution for corporate spending, became Denmark's most valuable fintech after a $150 million funding round last summer.

By the end of the year, the valuation had even grown to $4.7 billion.

And the French Spendesk also offers software that can be used to better monitor company expenses and recently collected 100 million euros.