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SMEs are getting more love in the fintech world these days, and one example of this is the growth of startups out of Sweden. mintwhich has built an AI-based platform for corporate cards and spend management that caters to SMEs, closed a €22 million ($23 million) round on the back of seeing its customer base grow to 12,000 SMEs from just 3,000 a year ago.
The round is led by Vor Capital, a London-based investment firm that has previously backed Mynt, with participation from other previous backers such as CNI and Incore. Mynt has now raised around €50 million, and from what we understand this funding puts its valuation at around €200 million ($210 million).
Mynt started when two of its founders, Baltasar Sahlin (CEO) and Johan Obermayer (CPO) were colleagues at Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications giant, where managing expenses was extremely difficult, which is ironic considering that the company is technically committed to The next generation of data communications.
They worked for one of the largest companies in Europe, but they knew that the situation was more serious for small businesses, which are often overlooked when it comes to IT services, from previous experience working in and with small businesses.
“I’ve experienced it myself, how difficult it is to issue cards and manage expenses. Pain points have really been the driving force for Mynt,” Sahlin said in an interview. When Mynt first started in 2018, there were very few options, he said in an interview. For SMEs in particular. “For us, it was more about being between the banks and the accounting systems, and providing a solution that solves this problem for SMEs.”
They teamed up with Magnus Wideberg, a systems engineer who has worked at a variety of financial companies, to start Mynt to address this gap, starting with companies in the Nordics, and now – with this round – starting its European expansion into the UK. And other markets.
Today, Mynt’s business provides corporate cards with its primary partner, Visa. (Sahlin said it considers American Express a “competitor.”)
Along with card services, it offers spending management tools and automated integrations with major accounting applications. Among the features it provides to its SMB customers are ways to automatically set up and manage petty expenses, automatic receipt matching, virtual cards, individual spending limits to better match spending with budget, and a mobile app to manage expenses on the go, and analytical tools to help customers understand… How to use budget better, and rely heavily on artificial intelligence in automation processes.
Interestingly, it also has a financial play built in: Mynt has built an application programming interface (API) that allows it to integrate with third parties, and power card issuance services for ERP companies, banks, fleet and fuel providers.
Another important point is that Mint focused its efforts on its region alone initially because the Nordic ecosystem is different “when it comes to accounting and payment paths,” Sahlin said. Its products are designed for businesses with between two and 500 employees, and its average customer size currently stands at 50 users.
Mynt faces some big competitors, both outside its region and beyond.
Denmark-based Pleo has achieved a milestone in expense management, also targeting small and medium-sized businesses. It was last valued at $4.7 billion when it raised $200 million in 2021. It’s not clear how that valuation has changed since then: The last money the company took in was $42 million in debt, earlier this year, for its credit products.
But Fortnox (coincidentally, like Mynt, is also a play on where money is kept) — which also builds expense management and other financial tools for SMBs and is publicly traded and also has a valuation in the $4 billion range — is actually a partner: Mynt operates the company’s corporate card services.
In the US, there are several companies chasing the SME opportunity here, including Last (which raised $200 million in debt and equity in September 2024), Emburse, and Brex and Ramp potentially linked to an IPO ( raised $150 million in April 2024). Big numbers don’t always mean hockey sticks, however: Brexit earlier this year saw major management changes and layoffs/restructuring after a period of very rapid growth.
Mynt may face a number of competitors, but there’s a case to be made that there’s room for more than a few companies in this space.
Expense management remains one of the big pain points in the world of work: accounts departments spend a lot of time trying to ensure that spending is properly itemized and authorized, and employees are not accountants and can sometimes get these things wrong.
The SME sector has added challenges: accounting departments are smaller, and in some cases may even be non-existent (you, you accounting, sales, IT, administration…), which creates an opportunity for solutions that automate time-consuming work such as an admin Expenses. Small businesses are usually second-guessed when it comes to building new, more efficient services, so they don’t
There are just over 26 million SMEs in the EU alone, making up around 99% of all businesses, meaning that the 12,000 SMEs Mynt currently has on its books represent a very small market impact. A report published by Pymnts last year showed that only about a quarter of SMBs use corporate cards in the US, one of the most developed markets – meaning there is still a largely untapped market.
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