Ciao Bella! Scalapay brings home $497 million as Italy now lays claim to its first unicorn

Having raked in $155 million in a Tiger Global-led round last September, it was only a matter of time until buy-now-pay-later platform Scalapay lay claim to the title of Italy’s first startup with a $1 billion+ valuation. And such is the case as of today, as the Milanese company has announced an additional $497 million ($213 million in equity and $284 million in debt) added to the coffers in a Series B round. In total, the company has raised $1,197,000.

With competitors Klarna valued at $45.6 billion (as of 10 June 21), Square laying down $29 billion to acquire Afterpay, and PayPal shelling out $2.7 billion to grab Japan’s Paidy, the BNPL space is hotter than a stack of flapjacks on a Sunday morning.

While Scalapay offers consumers the relatively industry-standard 3 installments, 4 installments, or entirely after 14 days payment options, where their competitors moved deeper into the banking space, Scalapay has taken a different route and is putting its focus clearly on the merchants themselves. 

Scalapay partnered retailers including Decathlon, Calzedonia, Moschino, Samsonite, Nike, and Pandora, report average basket sizes increase by 48% and an overall increase in conversion at checkout up by 11%. But now, the company wants to take things even further and has launched an ever further specialised platform, Magic.

“With Magic, we have removed all the common friction points at checkout and addressed key reasons for cart abandonment such as signup or login, shipping, payment selection, and privacy consents,” explained co-founder and CTO Johnny Mitrevski. “We have done this whilst respecting Europe’s strict PSD2 and GDPR rules.”

Handing Scalapay the unicorn club card, the company’s Series B round was led by Tencent and Willoughby Capital and saw heavyweight  Tiger Global, Gangwal, Moore Capital, Deimos, and Fasanara Capital all participating. And seemingly, only the best-of-the-best will do for the Italians, as Goldman Sachs advised Scalapay as a placement agent for the round.