Tide is one of the first financial platforms based in the United Kingdom. Established in 2015, Tide has grown its base with more than 350,000 members and over 400,000 business accounts.
Since its inception, Tide has assisted small and medium-sized enterprises by providing an efficient mobile-first banking experience. It offers SMEs the ability to set up current accounts and gain access to convenient financial services. This includes integrated invoicing and automated bookkeeping.
The road to international expansion
Tide plans to improve its financial platform, and expand globally. Moreover, the fintech company is also pushing to increase its market share. Hence, the Series C funding, led by Apax Digital.
Apax Digital, a company that collaborates with leadership teams of innovative software businesses and exceptional founders, came through for Tide. They raised $100 million in Series C funding. This funding has a business valuation of $650 million, which is more than enough to expand Tide’s international expansion strategy.
The company plans to expand its locations. Currently, locations are in Hyderabad, India, London, Sofia, and Bulgaria. In total, Tide has raised a total of $200 million in funding.
Tide’s first round of cash means expanding its footprint in India by providing a total of 100 million pounds and providing over 1,000 jobs in the course of five years.
Tide CEO Oliver Prill is eyeing on better and more improved features for the fintech company. He claims that business owners and users are assured of a more comprehensive software solutions system, with full integration and automation of accounting systems.
Oliver Prill took over Tide in 2018 when former founder George Bevis announced that he was standing down his role as CEO. A former chief operating officer at Kreditech, a German online lender, Oliver Prill joined Tide. Later that year, Tide gained around eight million pounds in bridge funding from existing investors Creandum and Passion Capital, Anthemis, and Augmentum Fintech.
Tide’s steady growth
The fintech company has had steady growth since its establishment in 2015. Tide now caters to six percent of UK companies. Moreover, the company has helped hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK looking to streamline their financial processes.
And with this funding, Tide will boast better features. The current ones are scheduled payments, mobile and web access, auto categories, instant notifications, easy card management, cash deposits, upload and auto-match receipts, and 24/7 support.
With more than 400,000 business accounts on their platform, Tide’s expansion means this number will continually grow. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, Tide saw its customer base double due to the adoption of online and digital services — the fintech niche included.
A cloud-native clearing bank ClearBank also believes in Tide’s mission to foster small and medium-sized enterprises’ growth. Tide was granted a total of 25 million pounds to help SMEs recover after the coronavirus pandemic put businesses into a crisis. Many exceptional investors have joined Tide’s journey, investing in the company since 2015. This includes Passion Capital, SpeedInvest, Jigsaw, Goodwater, Creandum, Anthemis, Augmentum, Latitude, LocalGlobe, and The SBI Group.
