Klearly Raises $14M Series A Led by PayPal Ventures to Scale Restaurant Payments
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
Klearly just raised a $14M Series A led by PayPal Ventures, as it expands its payments platform for restaurants, bars, and clubs across Europe.
The company is nearing $1B in annualized payment volume, with growth running in the hundreds of percent since launch.
Total funding now stands at $24M, with teams across Israel, the Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium.
Klearly was founded in 2023 by CEO Sam Koekoek, originally from Amsterdam, alongside Chief Strategy Officer Edan Dil and two other co-founders from the Netherlands.
Coming from Amsterdam, I always pay close attention to how local FinTechs approach products. In Klearly’s case, the focus is clear. The payments layer integrates directly with existing POS systems and runs on current hardware...
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Curious where FinTech is heading next? Dive into today’s updates 👇 I’ll be back tomorrow with more stories shaping the FinTech industry.
Cheers,
Marcel
POST OF THE DAY
➡️ Ingenico’s new terminal, Joel Beukers Edition 🤣. Would you flex this on your counter? Ingenico’s Next Generation Axium devices, on Android, are coming throughout 2026. Including our Digital Currency application to enable in-store stablecoin acceptance (all major stablecoins), the Digital Identity application to verify identity/age and keep a record, Device Management, and more.
FINTECH NEWS
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🇨🇴 Stori, the Mexican unicorn, arrives in Colombia. After receiving the incorporation authorization from the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia, the company is moving forward with its entry into the Colombian financial system. Keep reading
PAYMENTS NEWS
🌍 Noah and NALA launch instant stablecoin settlement network to modernise $850bn emerging-markets payments. Global businesses in Africa and Asia can now collect USD and pay out local currency in minutes, instead of days, bypassing a century-old banking system that costs users billions in fees.
🇫🇷 Adyen becomes a principal member of CB and a direct participant in STET, thus strengthening the integration of its offering in France. By becoming a direct participant in the STET clearing system, Adyen will now handle all transactions without intermediaries.
🇺🇸 ACI Worldwide enables Paze℠ for online checkout, advancing speed and convenience for digital commerce. The convenient Paze checkout experience enables consumers to pay online with their preferred credit and debit cards via added security through tokenization and streamlined digital authentication.
🇰🇪 Uber ends Visa card payments in Kenya. Ride-hailing firm Uber has quietly stopped accepting Visa cards as a payment option for users in Kenya, forcing customers to switch to alternative methods like cash and mobile money. Continue reading
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇬🇧 Revolut amps up fight against impersonation scams with new call identification feature. The new feature detects when a customer opening the Revolut app is on the phone, which includes apps allowing voice calls, and confirms whether they are, or not, talking with a Revolut agent.
🇧🇷 Nubank customers saved $ 29 million in one year via strategic partnerships. Nubank enters 2026 with more than 110 million customers in Brazil, about 61% of the adult population, having saved users $20.5 billion in fees, and is deepening engagement as most customers now use it as their primary bank.
🇨🇿 Banking Circle opens new branch in the Czech Republic, marking the latest milestone in European expansion. With this latest move, Banking Circle will provide direct Czech koruna (CZK) payment capabilities for customers around the world, helping to support global customers in accessing this dynamic market.
🇺🇸 US senators introduce long-awaited bill to define crypto market rules. If signed into law, it would clarify financial regulators' jurisdiction over the burgeoning sector, potentially boosting digital asset adoption. Read more
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 FinTech firm Betterment confirms data breach after hackers send fake crypto scam notification to users. Betterment said that hackers gained access to some company systems on January 9 by way of a social engineering attack. Customer names, email and postal addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth were compromised in the attack.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇸🇦 STC Bank joins hands with Mastercard to transform Saudi remittances through Mastercard Move. The collaboration is fully geared towards transforming the Saudi payments landscape by accelerating the digital transformation of Saudi financial services in accordance with growing digital adoption and consumers’ changing preferences.
🇦🇹 Worldline strengthens long-term partnership with PSA to deliver next-generation payments in Austria. Worldline will support PSA in upgrading to a next-generation payments platform, delivering enhanced scalability, resilience, security, and future-ready capabilities aligned with European standards.
🌎 Ingenico, Samsung, and Talus bring a mobile business operating solution to North America. The three-way partnership expands access to mobile payments for North American businesses, delivering frictionless operations with more flexible ways to accept payments wherever business happens.
🇬🇧 ClearBank selects Taurus to support its stablecoin-related services. The agreement will enable ClearBank to leverage Taurus’ technology to advance its digital asset strategy in a secure, scalable, and compliant manner, with a focus on supporting stablecoin-related services for its clients.
🌍 Akurateco and Payaza announce strategic partnership to expand payment capabilities across Africa and global markets. Through this collaboration, Payaza’s payment services are now available on the Akurateco platform, offering businesses seamless access to reliable African payment coverage supported by strong local acquiring, settlement efficiency, and cross-border expertise.
🇬🇧 Moonrise partners with Moneff to bring local SEK, NOK, and DKK payment rails to customers across the Nordics. Moneff can now offer eligible customers unique virtual account numbers with access to local Scandinavian rails, alongside EUR and GBP.
🇺🇸 Deutsche Bank expands support for PayPal to strengthen global payment capabilities. Under this expanded agreement, Deutsche Bank will scale up the merchant settlement, payouts, and begin withdrawals and collection solutions for PayPal in the US.
🇺🇸 Capital Engine announces strategic alliance with Regiment to expand Private Markets Infrastructure and Co-Syndication Capabilities. The alliance is designed to enable the co-syndication of select private investment opportunities across both firms’ curated investor networks, broadening discovery and access while maintaining disciplined, compliant capital-formation processes.
🇵🇰 Visa and easypaisa seal a partnership to scale card payments in Pakistan. Under the collaboration, easypaisa Digital Bank plans to introduce premium debit cards, roll out credit card products, and advance cross-border payment initiatives to improve the cardholder experience.
🌏 HitPay and Primer partner to boost cross-border payments. Singapore-based HitPay will use Primer’s unified payments infrastructure to connect local merchants with global acquirers. This will make it easier to accept multicurrency card payments and manage cross-border transactions.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
💰 Over the last week, there were two FinTech deals in Europe, raising a total of €9.8 million, including one transaction in France and one in the UK.
🇦🇪 Mal raises $230 million to launch world’s first AI-native Islamic digital bank. The initial funding round unites a worldwide network of investors, including prominent family offices and strategic funds, all committed to Mal’s mission of creating a smart, ethical, and inclusive financial service.
🇧🇭 Shorooq backs Flooss with $22m facility to drive FinTech growth in Bahrain. The funding is aimed at accelerating Flooss’s growth and expanding access to its instant, Sharia-compliant lending solutions for the region’s rapidly growing digitally active population.
🇳🇱 Klearly raises $14 million Series A led by PayPal Ventures to expand restaurant payments platform. The company’s solution is a payments layer that integrates directly with existing POS systems and runs on merchants’ current hardware. Read more
🇨🇦 Slate secures $1.3m to bring lending inside business platforms. With its pre-seed funding, Slate plans to continue developing its embedded lending infrastructure and work with Canadian platforms looking to deliver financial products more seamlessly to their customers.
🇺🇸 Real estate FinTech startup Whale raises $4M seed round to grow its rental security deposit management platform. Whale plans to use the funding for product improvement and new integrations. Continue reading
M&A
🇺🇸 Polygon Labs buys two crypto startups for $250 million as it looks to compete with Stripe. The acquisitions are meant to aid the blockchain network’s stablecoin strategy, said Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and Polygon Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal in an interview.
🇺🇸 Crypto-friendly lender Old Glory to go public through a SPAC deal. Old Glory has deep roots in Oklahoma as a traditional lender, but re-branded as a digital bank in 2022 and touts its intention to fully embed cryptocurrency into loans, deposits, and investment offerings.
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