Twinco Lands 50 Million Euros to Support Supply Chain Finance
Twinco Capital has secured 50 million euros ($52.8 million) to accelerate its global growth strategy, it announced at the Valencia Digital Summit last week.
The Amsterdam and Madrid-based supply chain fintech firm said it received the capital from BBVA Spark, which facilitates financial services for innovators to support their development and expansion as an arm of digital bank BBVA.
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One of the few European high-growth fintech firms led by women, Twinco offers a supply chain finance solution to fashion brands that covers purchase order funding. Founded in 2019 by CEO Sandra Nolasco, a former banker and specialist in trade finance, and chief operating officer Carmen Marín, a veteran equity investor and project financier at Banco Santander, the company has facilitated more than $250 million in funding for suppliers in emerging markets.
Twinco’s clients include large retail and apparel corporations. The company provides funding to their suppliers, paying up to 60 percent of the purchase-order value up front and delivering the rest on delivery. This transparency gives suppliers better cash flow with fewer obstacles. Twinco uses machine learning to assess the quality and strength of relationships between buyers and suppliers to mitigate risk.
Twinco works with more than 150 suppliers in 13 countries including Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Spain. It has received investments from Quona Capital, Working Capital Fund, Mundi Ventures and Finch Capital. In January, Twinco announced a $12 million funding round roughly two years after raising $3.7 million. On the debt side, BBVA Spark will become one of the firm’s key financial partners, including EBN Banco de Negocios and Zubi Capital.
“We are very pleased to support Sandra and Carmen, two entrepreneurs who have reinvented, with Twinco, the way supply chains are financed on a global scale by incorporating innovative environmental and social criteria into their supplier financing model,” said Spark Roberto Albaladejo, head of BBVA.
Nolasco said Twinco’s partnership with BBVA Spark would help its customers to build sustainable and competitive global supply chains. “It is only by partnering with this caliber of like-minded, financial institutions, that we will be able to address large-scale challenges like the one Twinco has set out to solve—closing the trade finance gap,” she said. With small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging countries facing a $2.5 trillion global trade finance gap, “This facility will support the company’s portfolio growth, expanding both the number of customers and geographies,” she added.
Twinco’s value “stems from the combination of its unique funding solution with business intelligence that provides a holistic overview of supply chain risk,” Marin noted. “Technology and machine learning provide invaluable data insights on commercial, financial and ESG suppliers’ performance, giving our customers a state-of-the-art supply chain risk management tool.”
