Lesslie aims to become a neobank and brings in new capital from well-known tech profiles

Fintech company Lesslie Technologies' payment service, Lesslie Pay which facilitates companies making international payments, is experiencing rapid and exponential growth. The company's success has attracted new investors such as Klarna's former CTO David Craelius and Swish's former chairman Erik Seifert. Both have participated in an investment round totaling SEK 10 million, and have joined the company's board of directors.

Lesslie is a licensed payment institution that was founded in 2020 by Gunnar Rytterling, a former Nordea manager, Oscar Viken, with extensive experience at Klarna and Filip Haglund, a skilled developer. The company's initial service, Lesslie Pay, which focuses on making it easier for companies with international trade, has been well received by its customers. Now the company wants to continue growing within the same customer vertical and replenishes the coffers with SEK 10 million in a recent new share issue. Notably, in 2022, Lesslie secured an investment of SEK 12 million from, among others such as Willem De Geer, the investment company YLD, and Noel Abdayem, the founder of Humble Group.

The company's payment service Lesslie PAY makes it easier for entrepreneurs who conduct business abroad by being integrated with the bookkeeping and offering better exchange rates than Swedish banks. The company's long-term vision is to offer several banking and CFO-related services, but over the past year it has become clear that efficiency and cost savings for international payments have been most requested by the company's customers. The new investment will therefore primarily be used to deepen the functionality of Lesslie Pay and for the service to be able to be integrated with more accounting systems.

Gunnar Rytterling, founder and CEO, Lesslie:

"The interest among business customers in our international payment service has completely exploded during the spring, which is natural given the challenging macro situation. Lesslie's service saves several millions annually for our business customers by reducing bank fees on foreign payments. The customer base has grown by over 300% in the past six months and we have a contracted volume of over SEK 3 billion. Our clear focus has appealed to investors.”

Among the investors in the latest round, which brings a total of SEK 10 million to Lesslie, are Klarna and Evolution Gaming's former CTO David Craelius and Swish's former chairman Erik Seifert. They will both also take their place on Lesslie's board in the future. Quinary Investment and Njord Ventures are also on the investor list. David Craelius on his role and the investment in Lesslie:

“I have built large development teams that have produced successful financial platforms during my career. But it has been a long time since I saw such a well-positioned company. Lesslie has managed to find a gap in the market that no one else is acting on and customers love the service. It is a complex platform to build and I am impressed by the technical level the company possesses. I look forward to following and contributing to the company's continued development.”

Gunnar Rytterling, founder and CEO, Lesslie, concludes:

"We see a huge need on the customer side for our service Lesslie PAY and with the help of our capital injection we can invest even more in improving the service and reaching out commercially. We also want to build more peripheral services specifically for foreign trade to really help all of Sweden's importers and exporters. Our focus now is in the foreign trade vertical and solving more problems for these customers with our software platform.”