finperks today announced a $4 Million Pre-Seed funding round led by Motive Partners, and seed+speed Ventures.
The Berlin-based company is building the API infrastructure layer for the global prepaid market – spanning gift cards, eCash and prepaid cards – a sector projected to reach $4.24 trillion by 2035.
While consumer demand for digital rewards, cashback and employee benefits continues to grow, the underlying infrastructure remains fragmented and outdated. Banks, FinTech, and HR Platforms that want to offer prepaid products today must integrate multiple vendors across issuing, brand relationships, settlement and compliance – often resulting in slow, regionally limited launches and poor user experience.
finperks replaces this complexity with a single API. Through a single integration, partners gain access to over 1,000 brands across Europe, enabling:
- Brand-funded cashback paid directly into bank accounts
- Digital employee benefits, such as Germany’s €50/month tax-free “Sachbezug”
- Instant digital gift cards embedded into financial products
The founding team brings deep experience in scaling financial infrastructure. Achim Bönsch, Sebastian Seifert, and Andreas Veller previously built Barzahlen/viafintech, the largest bank-independent cash network in Europe and the US, which was acquired by NYSE-listed Paysafe in a nine-figure exit in 2021.
Six months after launch, finperks is already live with multiple platforms. Payment app Flizpay uses finperks to deliver brand-funded cashback averaging 5%, paid instantly into users’ bank accounts at the point of purchase. HR Platforms Recardy and Paylo leverage finperks to distribute Germany’s tax-free employee benefits without requiring additional infrastructure on their side.
Sebastian Seifert, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, said: “Banks need cashback to retain and engage users. HR Platforms need benefits as a logical extension to upsell clients. None of them want to build prepaid infrastructure. They want to plug into it.”
Ramin Niroumand, Partner, Investments & Head of Venture at Motive Partners, says: “Achim, Sebastian, and Andreas are experienced serial founders who have been building in FinTech since its earliest days. I’ve known them since that time and have always been impressed by their clarity of vision and ability to execute. With finperks, they are addressing a large prepaid market that still runs on outdated infrastructure and lacks modern, API-first foundations. We’re excited to back them as they build the next generation of prepaid rails and help modernize this critical part of the financial ecosystem.”
Alexander Kölpin, Managing Partner at seed + speed Ventures, commented: “In the prepaid world, scaling cashback and benefit programs has often failed in the past due to fragmented and complex infrastructure. The finperks team solves this problem with an efficient approach that immediately impressed us: a single interface that allows partners to access a wide range of brands across Europe and to roll out programs quickly. The fact that finperks is already live on several platforms shortly after its launch shows the implementation strength of the experienced Barzahlen/viafintech team. We are delighted to support finperks as an investor in becoming the new global standard for prepaid infrastructure!.”
This new capital will be used to expand the engineering team, deepen brand partnerships, and scale operations across additional European markets.
