A prominent British fintech is exploring a sale just weeks after concluding a heavily discounted fundraising amid growing pressure on technology companies to consolidate.
Sky News has learnt that Railsr – formerly known as Railsbank – is working with bankers at FT Partners on a range of strategic options including an outright sale.
Sources said that while a further capital-raising was an option for the company, it looked unlikely.
Last month, Railsr announced the completion of a $46m Series C funding round, although it did not disclose that this took place at a valuation of about $250m – well below that of an earlier fundraising.
Railsr is a specialist in so-called embedded finance, and snapped up assets from the collapsed German company Wirecard.
It secured a coup earlier this year when it named Rick Haythornthwaite, the former chairman of MasterCard and Centrica, as its chairman.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Nigel Verdon, Railsr co-founder and chief executive, said: “The market conditions over the past 12 months are driving market consolidation, as it did in the past when multiple companies came together to build what is today called PayPal.
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“This is just a normal market cycle where everyone is evaluating potential partnerships, and we’re no different.
“We pioneered the highly investable category of embedded finance experiences – which is the next major transition in global financial services.”
Mr Verdon has previously claimed that the company is “transforming the finance industry in the same way that Apple did to the music industry when they created iTunes”.
It specialises in what it calls ’embedded finance experiences’, helping companies provide banking services, credit cards and digital wallets.
To date, Railsr has raised well over $100m in equity funding, with backing from investors including Visa.
