Javier Perez, who recently stepped down from Mastercard, has chosen Danish 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 conquer new European markets.
What started off as a simple idea at a Danish hackathon in 2016, to be able to cancel paid subscriptions like fitness memberships and phone plans with a click of a button, has in 2021 turned into a hastily growing enterprise.
“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 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,” said Javier Perez, Founder & Managing Partner at GPT, who stepped down as President of Mastercard Europe for two decades at the turn of the year.
Already trusted by eight banks in different markets including European market leaders Nordea and ABN Amro, the investment from the ex-Mastercard exec is a true vote of confidence for the innovative one-stop subscription shop, according to Subaio CEO and Co-founder, Thomas Laursen.
“The fintech sector is flush with funding,” he said, “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.”
The funding from GPT will be earmarked to penetrate new European markets, scale-up 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 Covid-19 pandemic, which has created explosive growth in the global subscription market, for example with Netflix
“The average consumer has between 8-11 subscriptions. Thus, banks’ customer support resources managing claims to unwanted or unrecognized 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,” added Laursen.
