▼ Summary
– Finperks is a Berlin startup founded by the team behind viafintech, offering a single API integration for banks, fintechs, and HR platforms to provide gift cards, cashback, and tax-free benefits.
– The company has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding led by Motive Partners and seed+speed Ventures to build its infrastructure.
– It solves a structural problem by consolidating access to over 1,000 brands, eliminating the need for partners to manage multiple fragmented providers themselves.
– The founding team includes experienced entrepreneurs like Sebastian Seifert, who previously co-founded and sold viafintech to Paysafe.
– Finperks has already onboarded its first customers, including payment app Flizpay and HR platforms Recardy and Paylo, and will use the funding to expand its team and European market presence.
A new Berlin-based startup is streamlining how businesses offer prepaid financial products by providing a unified API solution. Finperks has successfully secured $4 million in a pre-seed funding round to build infrastructure that allows banks, fintech firms, and human resources platforms to integrate gift cards, cashback programs, and tax-free employee benefits without developing complex backend systems themselves. The investment was co-led by Motive Partners and seed+speed Ventures, signaling strong investor confidence in the company’s approach to simplifying a fragmented sector.
The prepaid market, while substantial, is notoriously complex and operationally disjointed. A financial institution wishing to provide brand-sponsored cashback to its customers, or an HR software provider aiming to distribute Germany’s monthly €50 tax-free employee benefit (the Sachbezug), traditionally faces the arduous task of coordinating with numerous separate providers. These partners must manage relationships with card issuers, retail brand networks, settlement services, and compliance frameworks independently. Finperks consolidates this entire ecosystem into one technical integration, granting partners immediate access to a network of over one thousand brands across Europe.
Sebastian Seifert, co-founder and co-CEO of Finperks, brings deep experience to this challenge. He previously co-founded viafintech, the eCash platform known for its barcode-based Barzahlen/viacash service in Germany and Austria. That company grew to over 100 employees operating in 17 markets before its acquisition by Paysafe in late 2021 for more than $100 million. Seifert, recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30 lists, has reunited with his core viafintech team to launch this new venture from its Berlin-Charlottenburg headquarters.
The company’s value proposition resonates with clients who seek to enhance their offerings without the burden of internal development. “Banks need cashback to retain and engage users,” Seifert explains. “HR platforms need benefits as a logical extension to upsell clients. None of them want to build prepaid infrastructure. They want to plug into it.” This focus on being an enabling layer, rather than a consumer-facing brand, is central to Finperks’ strategy.
Despite being founded very recently, the startup reports significant early traction. It has already integrated its brand network and secured its first commercial clients. For instance, the payment application Flizpay utilizes Finperks’ API to provide instant, brand-funded cashback deposited directly into a user’s bank account at the moment of purchase. Furthermore, HR platforms Recardy and Paylo employ the service to distribute the Sachbezug benefit seamlessly to employees, eliminating the need for those platforms to construct their own payout mechanisms.
The newly acquired capital will be directed toward expanding the engineering team, strengthening relationships with retail brands, and facilitating geographic expansion into additional European markets. For its investors, Finperks represents a strategic bet on foundational financial technology. Motive Partners focuses on tech-enabled financial services and is building its early-stage portfolio, while seed+speed Ventures’ latest fund targets European B2B software companies that enhance enterprise workflows, a category into which Finperks fits precisely.
Operating with a compact team of eight, the company describes its founders as serial entrepreneurs with a proven track record. They are applying lessons learned from the viafintech experience to a market they understand thoroughly from both product and distribution perspectives, aiming to become the essential behind-the-scenes engine powering next-generation prepaid services.
(Source: The Next Web)
