INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Flux, the London fintech that has built a technology platform for banks and merchants to power itemised digital receipts and a lot more, has
raised $7.5 million in Series A funding
The round is led by VC firm e.ventures (which has previously backed the likes of Farfetch, Sonos and Groupon), with participation from
existing investors PROfounders, and Anthemis.Founded in 2016 by former early employees at Revolut, Flux bridges the gap between the itemised
receipt data captured by a merchant’s point-of-sale (POS) system and what little information typically shows up on your bank statement or
Off the back of this, it can also power loyalty schemes and card-linked offers, as well as give merchants much deeper POS analytics via
aggregated and anonymised data on consumer behaviour, such as which products are selling best in unique baskets.On the banking side, Flux is
currently available through Barclays (via Barclays Launchpad), challenger bank Starling, and for a small alpha group of Monzo customers
Once banking customers link their account to the service, Flux delivers digital receipts (and where available rewards and loyalty) for
transactions at Flux retailer partners.To that end, merchant partnerships include Costa Coffee, EAT, pod and itsu
Flux also recently announced that Pure is joining the service.“Our mission has always been to liberate the world’s receipt data because
by doing this we can enrich trillions of experiences globally,” Flux co-founder and CEO Matty Cusden-Ross tells me.“The information on a
receipt is used all the time in everyday life, from budgeting to loyalty to expensing but today these all require manual steps
We see a future in which all of these manual processes become seamless experiences, simplifying and enriching people’s lives
Our focus today is on establishing a standard, the Flux platform, to make this a reality within the U.K
before expanding to our first international market”.Of course, Flux’s attempts to become a standard for the interchange of item level
digital receipt data — and the proprietary platform that powers that standard — has always faced a chicken and egg problem: It needs
bank integrations to sign up merchants and it needs merchant integrations to sign up banks
Cracking this problem has clearly started to gather momentum, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by investors.“We’ve transitioned
from having to prove it’s possible to now scaling and that’s a great feeling,” says Cusden-Ross
“The aim for this round is to continue making Flux the gold standard for anything that touches receipt data, [ensuring] Flux remains super
easy to use for everyone — consumers, banks and retailers
What this means is going fully live across some of the largest U.K
retail banks as well as ramping our up our live merchants”.(Related, I understand that Flux has already begun integrating with one of the
supermarkets and an “international fast food chain,” amongst other unannounced partnerships.)“Creating a real-time platform that
handles massive data volumes is hard, but we’ve cracked it,” adds the Flux CEO
“We’re investing heavily in bringing on the best engineers to continue scaling in a big way
Having figured out the recipe for working with banks and retailers quickly, it’s now all about growing as fast as possible”.
