In the last month we have seen Spanish technology companies in potential niche markets that have decided to count on the support of venture capital to grow and be able to compete internationally. From fintech applications such as Verse, to space imaging companies such as Satlantis.

Verse raises €7.6M in second investment round

See a startup founded less than a year ago by three twenty-something Catalans. The company, which makes it possible to transfer money by simply associating the recipient's card number, typing in the amount and selecting the contact in the address book, promises to be a benchmark in the world of Fintech worldwide.

Verse is only 8 months old, has achieved almost half a million downloads between Apple's App Store and Google Play and handled several million dollars in transactions.

The round was led by Spark CapitalOther investors that have participated include US VC eVentures (with Idealista co-founder and former Google and Yahoo co-founder Bernardo Hernández at the helm), and the firm Greycroft Partners. Moreover, according to sources in the know, Paypal wanted to enter, but in the end it has not done so, is it waiting for the company to grow and buy it at that time?

For the time being, the 8.3 million will be used to think (a little more) big: increase the current staff of 12 employees, grow internationally and compete head-to-head with Twyp, Stripe or even Square, the mobile payments company of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, which has recently landed in Europe.

Getting the round was no easy task, these 20-year-olds have had months of negotiation and many trips to San Francisco to get the funding, which at first seemed very difficult.

Satlantis receives €2.2M round to take photos from space

Satlantis is a Spanish company, based in Bilbao, which is developing cameras, little bigger than a shoebox, which, when integrated into nanosatellites, make it possible to obtain images of the Earth's surface in real time with a high image resolution. These devices have the advantage of being able to send photographs every 15 to 20 minutes. This is a breakthrough compared to traditional satellites, which send images back to Earth at most once a day.

The applications of this technology, which, as Satlantis CEO Juan Tomás Hernani points out, seeks to "democratise space", are vast and range from monitoring car parks in large shopping centres to monitoring maritime traffic or even controlling large migratory flows.

 Telefónica, the Everis-NTT group, the engineering firm Idom and the Basque venture capital firm Orza have participated in the €2.35M round. In addition, institutions such as Axis (the private equity fund management company of the ICO), through the FOND-ICOpyme fund, and the Basque Government and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, which, through its venture capital is have supported the development of a new factory for the firm in Bilbao.

Untruck receives €2M, for road freight transport

OnTruck, the first professional marketplace for road freight transport, which was born with the vocation of becoming the Uber of regional freight transport for companies.

This company has just received €2M, in a round in which important investment funds in the European system have participated: Point Nine Capital, based in Berlin; the British fund Local Globe, and the Spanish Samaipata Ventures, led by José del Barrio.

For the time being, OnTruck, which focuses on regional service, operates in Madrid and Barcelona, within a radius of 150 km for each of these locations, although it plans to open for business in Valencia in two months and to expand to the UK and Germany in less than a year's time.

"The apps that facilitate the management of freight transport are being welcomed in the market, recently, we have met companies like Icontainers, which have closed rounds for more than €5M" says Diego Gutiérrez, an expert in corporate finance.

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