National Australia Bank’s venture capital fund, NAB Ventures, has led a funding round in a Toronto-based cloud financial technology company.
The $24 million Series D funding round also includes backing from Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Silicon Valley venture firms CRV and Social Capital, global funds OurCrowd and Harbourvest, as well as Canadian investors OMERS Ventures, BDC IT Venture Fund, BDC Capital and Portag3.
The Canadian fintech called «Wave» delivers cloud-based financial management software including accounting, invoicing, and payroll with integrated financial services such as credit card processing and lending.
Targeting entrepreneurs with fewer than 10 employees, Wave has over two and a half million small business customers in more than 200 countries around the world.
«As the largest business bank in Australia with over 450,000 small and medium business customers, we are interested in any emerging technologies in this space that provide customers with a connected experience,» said Melissa Widner General Partner NAB Ventures.
NAB an Active Investor
Following the capital raising exercise NAB Ventures now has the right to appoint an observer to the Wave board.
NAB established the ventures fund in July 2015 and in April 2016 hired Todd Forest to lead it. Forest was previously the CEO of a mobile payments and data business focused on the hospitality industry, and served as Head of MSN Asia Pacific in Singapore.
Prior to joining NAB Ventures as a General Partner, Widner was a successful entrepreneur who founded 7Software, a Silicon Valley based enterprise software company.
The fund made its first investment last year when it invested in Sydney-based technology start-up Data Republic.
