Montonio — Investing in Smart Checkout Solutions

We are beyond excited to announce our participation in a seed round of Montonio Finance, early stage fintech startup based out of Talinn, Estonia focusing on improving checkout experience for both merchants and end customers.

The round was led by Tera.vc with participation from ff.vc and other VCs and angels including 365.fintech. We are joining a tally of previous top notch early stage Baltics investors including Lemonde Stand, Gorilla Capital, Practica Capital, Startupwiseguys and Superangel.

Montonio becomes our first portfolio company hailing from the Baltics. Renowned for the quality of the startups and fintech in general (Wise anybody?); the region is one of the focus areas we zooming in on at 365.fintech.

After several months of speaking to a lot of Baltic fintech startups, we can confidently say that Montonio is up there with the best of early stage companies hailing from the region.

Why have we invested?

What initially got us excited was, unsurprisingly — the team. Despite the switch to Zoom investing and in-person meetings out of question; we have gotten to know the Montonio team led by Markus Lember, CEO and co-founder over several months of discussions and came away highly impressed.

The clarity of the team’s vision, their ambition as well as quality of their execution is top-notch and we are excited to support them going forward in their journey.

Montonio Team

Secondly, Montonio plays in two areas that are closely aligned with our investment thesis — open banking and merchant financing (and merchant services in general) are on the top of our mind when it comes to future of financial services in Europe.

Montonio joins the battle for the merchant checkout in Baltics, CEE and beyond, but what is unique about Montonio is their holistic take on their offering. They are attacking the space from few distinct vectors:

• Payments — Montonio facilitates full-fledged payments acceptance for merchants; both through the traditional card payments rails as well as through their innovative and cost-competitive open banking
• Financing facilitation — Montonio acts as a credit facilitator/marketplace between merchants and credit providers; facilitating appropriate financing options for bigger shopping cart purchases
• Auxiliary merchant services — payments and financing facilitation open up a world of opportunities to make live easier for the ecommerce players — from improving efficiency of the checkout to cross-selling innovative financial services such as insurance or revenue-based merchant financing.

Having onboarded over one thousand regional merchants already; we believe this multi-faceted and agile approach to the merchant value proposition can be one of Montonio’s winning ingredients in the European checkout wars.

“BNPL has been available in the Baltics for over a decade and recent years have seen many new competitors enter the market. They all look the same to the consumer, offering similar terms, and often at checkout they only get one offer, even if technically a cheaper option is available,” comments CEO Markus Lember. ”Montonio takes on the role of the consumer advocate — our product aggregates the offers and helps the buyers pick the best option.”

Congratulations to the whole Montonio team on the investment — onwards and keep rocking!