TrueLayer raises $27M led by Italy's CDP Venture Capital

UK payments fintech TrueLayer has raised a $27 million round led by CDP Venture Capital, Italy's state-backed investor, which is backing the company for the first time as it pushes deeper into the Italian market.

TrueLayer announced the round on 8 October. The round drew a consortium of new and existing investors alongside CDP Venture Capital. The company plans to use the funds to build its presence in Italy, where it already runs one of its core engineering hubs in Milan.

What does TrueLayer actually do?

TrueLayer, backed by Stripe and Tiger Global, uses open banking technology to let customers make online payments directly from their bank accounts. The product category is known as account-to-account payments, or "pay by bank" — an alternative to routing transactions through the card networks Visa and Mastercard.

The company's stated mission is to disrupt the dominance of card payments.

Francesco Simoneschi and Luca Martinetti, two Italians, founded TrueLayer in London in 2016. Their goal: build a modern payment network for Europe.

How deep does the Italian commitment go?

TrueLayer has raised roughly $350 million in total funding to date, according to the company. Around a quarter of its workforce — about 70 people — now works in Italy, with Milan serving as one of its core engineering hubs.

The company says it expects to continue hiring in Italy through 2027.

Simoneschi, co-founder and CEO of TrueLayer, said: "We started TrueLayer with a simple belief: Europe deserves payment infrastructure built in Europe. Having Italy back that belief means a great deal to us personally, especially to our talented team in Milan, who work hard every day to build the future of European payments."

The round signals where TrueLayer sees its next phase of growth: with a state-backed Italian lead investor, a Milan engineering base and hiring plans running through 2027, the company is anchoring its European payments ambitions firmly in Italy.