Wise, a fintech startup that partners with other companies so that they can offer business bank accounts to their own customers, raises $12M Series A
Fintech startup Wise has raised a $12 million Series A round. The company offers business bank accounts with an interesting go-to-market strategy.
Context & Ripple Effects
In late 2020, Wise was an early bet on banking-as-a-service: rather than acquiring customers directly, it let partner companies offer business bank accounts under their own brands, with e.ventures leading a $12M Series A to scale that channel.
The arc since then validates the model and then outgrows it: Wise went public within a year via a London direct listing valuing it at $11B with first-quarter revenue of ~$168M up 43% YoY, and by 2026 it is planning a Nasdaq debut while moving from powering other companies' accounts to launching its own UK bank accounts against Monzo's 15M users.
First-order effects
- e.ventures' $12M gives Wise capital to sign more partners, letting those companies embed business banking into their own customer relationships without building a bank.
Second-order effects
- The funding round helped prove the category: two years later Solid raised a far larger $63M Series B for APIs bundling banking, payments, and crypto, showing investors now fund the infrastructure layer at scale.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, embedded-finance startups graduate from powering partners' accounts to holding licenses of their own — as Wise is doing with its planned UK bank accounts and dual US-UK listing structure — collapsing the distinction between the BaaS vendor and the bank behind it.
The trend: Banking-as-a-service is shifting account distribution from banks to the software platforms that embed accounts into their own products, with the most successful vendors eventually becoming chartered competitors themselves.