Global Brain leads $14.5m round for Japan's SmartBank
Japan’s Global Brain has led a JPY 2bn (USD 14.5m) Series A round for SmartBank, a local start-up that provides prepaid Visa cards and accompanying expense management apps.
The VC firm is investing via its sixth and seventh flagship funds, according to a statement. Fund VII raised JPY 19.8bn in 2020. Fund VI closed on JPY 19.7bn three years earlier.
Globis Capital Partners, Anri, and Z Venture Capital, formerly Yahoo’s YJ Capital, also participated. Strategic backing from the financial services industry was represented by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital and DBJ Capital.
It comes one year to the week after a JPY 1bn seed round featuring Global Brain, Globis, Anri, Beenext Capital Management, GMO Venture Partners, Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, US-Japan investor SV Frontier, and Heart Driven Fund, a VC unit of mobile gaming company Akatsuki.
SmartBank’s core offering allows users to charge a debit card with a monthly budget and make payments as a connected app tracks the spending details in real-time. The idea is to better manage personal finances by continuously visualising spending by category and drawing a graphical timeline of overall expenses.
The Series A will be used to roll out a product alternately called “B/43” and “Kakeibo,” with the latter term referring to a Japanese method for household budgeting. This is a joint account service designed for use by couples, roommates, and friends, who want to manage their household finances together, along with their individual finances.
B/43 was launched in April last year and is now said to track payments worth hundreds of millions of yen per month. SmartBank claims that almost 100% of customers who have used the service for three months continue using it. The company estimates there are some 15m households with more than one income in Japan that face difficulties managing their finances.
The plan is to reach 1m downloads of B/43 by the end of 2023. Meanwhile, a similar family-oriented service will be launched that allows parents to manage the spending of their children – from primary school to university age – helping them increase their financial literacy.
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