Twig Group, a London-based circular economy fintech company, has acquired mobile phone recommerce firm Mobi Market in a deal valued at more than $10m (£8m).
The deal, shared exclusively with UKTN, will bolster the circular economy options available via Twig’s ecosystem.
Launched in 2020, Twig provides an e-money account that lets users sell pre-owned fashion items and electronics for instant cash, or “tokenise” them and use the cash to buy cryptocurrency and NFTs.
It also offers a banking account to send and receive payments online, along with a free Visa debit card.
Founded in 2016 by Dominic Lovegrove, Emeka Nwadike, Dean Ray and Oliver Tedcastle, UK-based Mobi Market provides a range of smartphone reseller services.
Twig’s acquisition of Mobi Market dovetails into the scaleup’s focus on recycling products to improve sustainability.
Twig said it will also embed its Twig Pay service, a checkout feature promoting green circular payment options, into Mobi Market’s ecommerce site.
“Mobi Market has proven itself a leader in the field, a testament to Dom’s, Emeka’s, Dean’s and Oliver’s work,” said Geri Cupi, founder and CEO of Twig. “We look forward to joining forces to bring another dimension to circular economy services and delighting our customers.”
Twig is targeting millennials and gen Z with its “Web3 green payment infrastructure”. The company says it has witnessed more than 100,000 monthly downloads.
Twig self-describes as a “bank of things”. However, it’s technically not a bank – like PayPal, it’s an e-money account. Such prepaid accounts aren’t protected by the UK’s financial regulator, but this means Twig doesn’t have to jump through the same lengthy regulatory hurdles and can therefore scale more quickly.
Mobi Market co-founder Dominic Lovegrove said: “We enjoy one of the fastest growth trajectories in the sector, we are excited to partner with Twig and drive Mobi Market into its next chapter. We look forward to continuing our customer focus with improved capabilities thanks to our Twig partnership.”
It follows Twig’s £25.7m Series A funding round in January, which was geared towards launching in the US market.
That raise brought the fintech’s total funding to just over £32m.
Mobi Market is Twig’s latest acquisition in less than six months, with the fintech company acquiring second-hand clothing market Loopster in December.
The post Fintech Twig acquires Mobi Market for £8m to boost circular economy offering appeared first on UKTN | UK Tech News.
