UK fintech Fly Now Pay Later lands £35m Series A

Fly Now Pay Later, a UK-based fintech which allows people to spread out the cost of their holiday trips have landed £35 million in a Series A funding round.

Amid a near shutdown of the world’s travel industry during the coronavirus crisis, the start-up has managed to raise a mixture of new equity and debt led by asset management firm Revenio Capital, with participation from Shawbrook Bank and BCI Finance, a firm which specifically funds tech-enabled lenders.

Customers can stagger payments for a trip – including flights, hotels, car hire and insurance – over 12 months if they buy their holidays through certain partner websites, such as lastminute.com, TravelUp and the Moresand Group.

The fintech, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), says it will use its investment to help “reboot” the travel industry post-lockdown, as well as grow its UK operations and expand into Europe, beginning with Germany in the second quarter of 2020, followed by France later this year.

Co-founder and CEO, Jasper Dykes, says the fresh capital injection is a “welcome boost” to an – at present – suffering sector. “[The investment] provides us with adequate cash flow to help steer us through these challenging times.”

Partnering with travel businesses, the fintech allows their consumers to spread payments over three to 12 instalments. The annual percentage rate (APR) can range from 0% to 44.99% interest, depending on the amount borrowed which can be between £100 and £3,000. If consumers pay it all off before the trip, they don’t have to pay any interest.

“Our proprietary platform has been designed to make instantaneous credit decisions – providing digestible payments options to consumers traditionally underserved by existing credit institutions,” says Dykes.

Having offered its services through business-to-business (B2B) channels only since its launch four years ago, the 70-person fintech is looking to roll out its own consumer offering through a payments app called ‘Fly Now Pay Later’ using some of the capital raised this month.