Ex-Tink Employees Launch Atlar, a Payments Automation Startup

Stockholm-based startup Atlar has raised a $5 million seed round led by Index Ventures. The company is working on an application programming interface (API) that facilitates interbank payments for European businesses.

In addition to Index Ventures, La Famiglia VC, Cocoa and various business angels also participated in the round, such as Revolut CFO Mikko Salovaara, former Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Adyen Thijn Lamers and N26 CFO Jan Kemper.

While European consumers are already quite familiar with open banking and payment initiation, many B2B transfers are still processed manually. Business banking hasn't seen the same level of payments innovation.

And yet, corporate banks are already offering ways to initiate payments without having to log into a web portal and download a spreadsheet. But banks don't necessarily run modern REST APIs. They expect a very specific formatted text file on an SFTP server.

If you have a development team, they can create a custom integration. But many companies simply don't have the resources to maintain those connections. They prefer to pay a partner to handle all the technical details.

Atlar provides a modern API that hides all the complexities of banking connections. Once a business uses Atlar, they can initiate transfers, reconcile transactions, and process direct debits through Atlar's API.

In particular, Atlar can be used for payments, insurance premiums, deposits and loan repayments. Companies that operate in several European countries probably have several bank accounts. This is why payment automation could be an interesting improvement for these companies.

“Accepting payments as a business is now quite simple, but initiating them with your bank is still extremely slow and manual,” Atlar co-founder and CEO Joel Nordström said in a statement. . “That's why Atlar is becoming the operating system for banking payments. By creating a new category, we hope to trigger a wave of innovation for our customers, which will ultimately benefit European consumers and businesses."

In addition to Joel Nordström, Joel Wägmark and Johannes Elgh are the other two co-founders. They all worked at Tink, the public banking company acquired by Visa for $2.2 billion.

Atlar competes with Numeral, a French startup I wrote about earlier this year. So far, Atlar is focusing on the Nordic countries, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. And today's funding round will be helpful for European expansion.