UK digital business bank Allica Bank has acquired London-based fintech Kriya to strengthen its lending proposition for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and expand into embedded payments for the first time. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Founded in 2011 as MarketInvoice before rebranding to MarketFinance and then later Kriya, the SME credit and payments fintech offers working capital solutions, pay later services, offline payments, buyer authentication, and a B2B pay later product that launched on Stripe in September 2024.
The purchase bolsters Allica’s existing SME product portfolio, which includes business banking and savings accounts alongside a number of lending products.
Speaking on the deal, Richard Davies, Allica’s CEO, says: “For too long SMEs have struggled to access the flexible finance they need as the high street banks have retrenched.”
Davies adds the company plans to lend “£1 billion of working capital finance to SMEs over the next three years”.
Through the Kriya acquisition, Allica aims to capture 10% of the established SME finance market by 2028 while also building out its embedded finance proposition.
The move represents Allica’s third acquisition after purchasing AIB’s GB SME lending customers in 2021 and bridging lender Tuscan Capital in September 2024, shortly after the bank reported its first full year of profitability.
Earlier this year, the bank partnered with open banking provider Yapily to enable account top-ups for SME clients through integration with Allica’s Business Rewards Account.
Allica says that due to its “strong recognition in the SME finance market”, Kriya will continue to operate under its own brand identity following the acquisition. Moreover, the fintech’s CEO and co-founder, Anil Stocker, will remain at the helm of the business and all existing Kriya staff will join Allica.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
