Canadian fintech company Wealthsimple secured an additional capital round totalling $750 million ($610 million) in a post-money estimate of $5 billion ($$4 billion). This round is led by Meritech and Greylock and includes funding from Inovia, Sagard, and Redpoint, Two Sigma Ventures, TCV, and TCV, as well as individual investors, including Drake, Ryan Reynolds, and Michael J. Fox (basically all the most well-known Canadians).
The new round of capital raised by Wealthsimple more than triples the value from the previous round, which was a one-year, $114 million Canadian (roughly $93 million) financing announced in October. The funding was accompanied by an after-tax value of $1.5 billion ($1.22 billion).The Toronto-based firm has been a pioneer in the field of democratising the financial services available to consumers such as cryptocurrency asset sales, and peer-to-peer transfers.
The company claims that it saw significant growth during the outbreak, which is likely to be one of the reasons why its valuation was so high between the most recent increase and the one that followed. The company’s commission-free retail investment platform has increased “rapidly” over the course of the last 14 months, it claims, and its crypto trading platform, which it introduced in August, has also experienced a significant adoption due to the recent increase of interest among consumers in crypto assets.
In the last quarter of 2018, Wealthsimple launched its first P2P money transfer app, Wealthsimple Cash, and in March, the app was made accessible for all Canadians. It is very comparable in its features and functions to Venmo or Square’s Cash application; however, neither of these options has been made available to Canadians so far. Wealthsimple’s app is completely free to use and is distinct from its crypto and stock trading platforms. It has attracted a significant amount of untapped demand in the market and has witnessed the fastest growth so far.
With this money, Wealthsimple plans to “expand its market position, build out its product suite, and grow its team.” Wealthsimple also provides an automated savings and investment product (the robot-adviser tools that it was initially founded around) and tax filing tools. In addition, it has shown a clear willingness and desire to expand its offerings to cover more of the financial aspects of its customers’ lives when it is armed with new resources.
The company claims to have more than 1.5 million users and more than $10 billion in assets under management, based on the most recent numbers that were publicly available.
