Finance Manager

finmid bags €17m as it moves into vehicle financing. October 8, 2026 finmid, a Berlin-headquartered embedded lending firm that powers financing for platforms including Wolt and Delivery Hero, has secured €17m in fresh capital as it rolls out a vehicle financing scheme with Bolt and a merchant lending offering with Skroutz. Big Pi Ventures led the Series A extension, with Mainset co-investing and existing backer Earlybird also taking part. The latest injection lifts the amount finmid has raised to date to €52m. The company plans to channel the money into growing its asset-finance offering, its infrastructure for drawing on multiple funding sources and its underwriting capabilities. It will also back a push into new types of platforms, with mobility and e-commerce among the target categories. The first of the two launches, Bolt Vehicle Solutions, sees the ride-hailing company team up with finmid to give fleet operators access to vehicle financing built around their needs. According to the announcement, the European ride-hailing market is expected to be worth €157bn by 2034. However, operators supplying vehicles to meet this demand often struggle to secure funding, as conventional lenders have limited insight into how fleet businesses actually perform, while carmakers' standard finance packages are not suited to vehicles that are driven intensively for commercial purposes. Under the new scheme, operators can browse vehicles on the Bolt platform before being passed to finmid to compare financing options and submit an application. Repayments are set at a fixed monthly amount, and the operator takes ownership of the vehicle once the final instalment is made, converting an ongoing expense into an asset held over the long term. The second launch, Skroutz Funding, is a partnership with Greece's biggest online marketplace. It allows Skroutz to offer loans directly to the roughly 9,000 merchants that sell through it. Skroutz Group supplies the capital, while finmid takes care of underwriting, regulated lending, servicing and refinancing. This marks the first time finmid's credit infrastructure has been built around a platform's own funds. finmid was established on the view that business lending is shifting towards the platforms companies already rely on day to day. Its infrastructure lets platforms across Europe offer financing to their business users via one integration. finmid manages underwriting, regulated lending and servicing, with funding provided by the platform, its banking partner or finmid's refinancing partners. This is the firm's first funding announcement since it closed a €23m Series A in April 2024. Since its launch, finmid has made more than €4bn in financing offers to businesses in 30 European markets, working alongside partners such as Wolt, Delivery Hero, myPOS and efood. Roughly 85% of its borrowers come back for additional financing, and merchants that have received funding have increased their revenue on partner platforms by up to 45%, it said. finmid co-founder Alexander Talkanitsa said, "Two years ago, embedded lending meant a cash advance for a restaurant. Today the same rails carry a multi-year vehicle loan, a marketplace's own balance sheet, and the potential for more. Every platform with business customers now has a way to become their financing partner without becoming a bank." finmid co-founder Max Schertel said, "Small businesses have never lacked ambition - they've lacked a lender who could see them. Platforms, with their live and embedded view of the businesses they power, are uniquely placed to fill that gap, and finmid exists to make it happen. With Bolt we're financing the cars that fleets run on; with Skroutz the marketplace itself is putting its capital behind its merchants. Our job is to make that credit safe, fast and regulated - whoever provides the money and whatever businesses need it for." Bolt Europe BD lead Joshua Okeleke said, "Fleet operators are essential to making ride-hailing work, but access to vehicles and financing can be a real barrier to growing their businesses. With Bolt Vehicle Solutions, we're helping remove that barrier by combining preferential vehicle deals with a simpler path to financing and, ultimately, ownership. That gives our fleet partners a stronger foundation to invest in their businesses, put more vehicles on the road and grow alongside rising passenger demand." Enjoying the stories? Investors. The following investor(s) were tagged in this article.

Finmid raises €17M to finance Bolt fleet vehicles. The Series A extension, led by Big Pi Ventures and Mainset, backs Finmid's move from short-term merchant credit into multi-year vehicle finance. Listen to article. Finmid, the Berlin fintech founded by former N26 colleagues Alexander Talkanitsa and Max Schertel, has raised a EUR17 million Series A extension and struck a multi-year vehicle-financing deal with Bolt. Announced on October 6th, 2026, the financing backs a move beyond the short-term merchant advances that first defined Finmid's embedded-lending model. The extension was led by Athens-based Big Pi Ventures and London-based Mainset, with existing investor Earlybird participating. Tech.eu reported that the round brings Finmid's total funding to EUR52 million. Blossom Capital and N26 co-founder Max Tayenthal are also among its backers. Talkanitsa and Schertel worked at N26 before starting Finmid in 2021; Tayenthal was their former boss there. Schertel described the founding idea in a post about starting Finmid: businesses need money for working capital, unexpected expenses, growth and difficult periods. He recalled joining N26 when it had about 20 employees and said starting Finmid followed a similar instinct: find a problem worth solving, then take on the work of fixing it. Finmid supplies white-label lending infrastructure that lets a marketplace or software platform present financing to its business customers. Talkanitsa told Tech.eu that the infrastructure used for restaurant cash advances can also support a multi-year vehicle loan. The Bolt agreement applies that model to a different category of credit. From cash advances to vehicles. Tech.eu reported that Bolt fleet operators will be able to access up to EUR400,000 over four years to finance vehicles. That is a larger, longer-duration use of credit than a typical short-term working-capital advance. The deal gives Finmid a route into mobility finance through a platform whose fleet operators need vehicles to provide the service. Finmid also agreed to provide merchant lending through Skroutz, a Greek online marketplace. Tech.eu cited Wolt and Delivery Hero among Finmid's existing platform relationships. These relationships span delivery, commerce and mobility, where platforms can offer financing to merchants or operators already using their services. The program's scale and economics will depend on how many operators qualify and how financing is arranged. Finmid's legal notice says regulated lending is provided by authorised partners, while Finmid supplies the technology and distribution layer. The bet behind the extension. Finmid says it will use the new capital to expand asset-finance products, build infrastructure and underwriting capacity, and enter categories including mobility and e-commerce. Vehicle finance requires support for a larger purchase and a longer repayment period than a merchant cash advance; the Bolt partnership gives Finmid a specific use case for that expansion. Talkanitsa's framing, as reported by Tech.eu, is that platforms can become financing partners for their business customers without becoming banks. Schertel's account of the founding motivation supplies the other part of the pitch: businesses have recurring capital needs, and platforms already have relationships with them. Finmid is betting that platforms can help distribute financing while Finmid and its regulated partners handle the infrastructure and lending work. The announcement reports access of up to EUR400,000 over four years but does not describe the overall program's funding or credit-risk arrangements. The product will test whether Finmid can extend its platform-based distribution model to financing commitments that last years, beyond the short-term merchant advances that built its business. RuntimeWire, Inc. get virtually zero search traffic. Please consider sharing this story. Signal check Noise Signal Where does this story land? Drag the dial. The startup Backed by Big Pi Ventures Mainset Earlybird Blossom Capital Stay on the wire. Breaking startup & AI news, funding scoops, and launches as they happen. Follow @runtimewire on Threads and LinkedIn.