Excuse the curious headline, but mobile point-of-sale technology startup SumUp is today announcing a "double-digit million dollar" investment that "follows last year’s double-digit million dollar Series B financing round".
FYI, according to earlier coverage by Kommersant, the size of this investment investment 'exceeded 10 million euros' ($13.4 million).
The iZettle and payleven competitor raised the fresh capital primarily from Moscow, Russia-based fintech-focused VC firm Life.SREDA, with prior investors such as Groupon and BBVA Ventures chipping in.
The cash will be used to gain traction for SumUp's recently launched Chip & PIN card terminal - “PIN+” - which it bills as the first proprietary mobile C&P device of any mPOS provider in Europe.
Also read: (SumUp rival) iZettle bags 40 million euros in Series C funding
Alongside the new investment, SumUp is also announcing that not one but two of its four co-founders are stepping down from their executive positions. Stefan Jeschonnek and Dr. Jan Deepen, who started SumUp together with CEO Daniel Klein and Marc-Alexander Christ, will no longer be SumUp's Chief Product Officer and Chief Commercial Officer, respectively.
In my experience, founders don't usually jump ship when all is going well with a startup. Last May, SumUp confirmed that it was shutting down its Dublin office, which resulted in the loss of 30 jobs.
SumUp currently (self-reportedly) serves "hundreds of thousands" merchants in 14 countries across Western Europe, Russia and Brazil, and Deepen in particular played an instrumental role in this, leading the startup's international expansion and business development.
The company has not announced any replacement for either executive who's departing the company in this critical growth stage, and Deepen has not yet responded to my request for more information about him and Jeschonnek jumping ship.
That said, both of them will continue to be "shareholders and active supporters of the company", according to the press release.
If anyone has more information about the reasons behind their departure, feel free to get in touch.
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