Last week Blackmoon, an international online lending platform with Russian roots, secured $2.5 million in an equity funding round which involved A&NN Group, Flint Capital, Target Global, and unnamed individual investors. Neither the valuation of the company nor the structure of the investment have been disclosed.
Presenting its service as “marketplace lending as a service” (PLaaS), Blackmoon allows institutional investors to directly invest in loans issued by balance sheet lenders “in a scalable and a transparent way.”
“Lending is one of the universal structures of the modern financial system. And unlike other players, we’re not trying to replace banks; we want to give them and other balance-sheet lenders a unique tool to improve efficiency and risk management,” said Oleg Seydak, co-founder and CEO of Blackmoon.
“We estimate the global market for such hybrid service is in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” he added.
The company was cofounded by Flint Capital partner Oleg Seydak and Ilya Perekopsky, who formerly served as vice president of Vkontakte (VK), Russia’s leading social network. Launched initially in Russia in June 2015, the marketplace now works with lending institutions in the United States (where it launched this past July), Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Georgia.
The startup initially raised $1 million in seed funding from its two founders and Flint Capital.
Blackmoon says that the latest funding will be used for the further development of its technological platform and front-end solutions, and for further expanding in the US market.
The company plans to provide marketplace solution for banks in early 2017 and apply for a US broker/dealer license in the second half of 2017.
See an analysis of Blackmoon’s business by VentureBeat writer Paul Sawers.
