Japan’s SmartBank Raises $27 Million in Series B Round

Tokyo-based fintech SmartBank has secured around $27 million in a Series B round consisting of a mix of equity funding and debt financing, the fintech firm said on Tuesday.

SmartBank has raised $19.6 million in equity funding, led by SMBC-GB Growth No. 1 Investment Limited Partnership. The investment also includes contributions from existing shareholders and new backers, such as Seven Bank and Japan Post’s Spiral Regional Innovation No. 1 Investment Limited Partnership.

Additionally, SmartBank has secured $7.7 million in debt financing from several financial institutions, including Shoko Chukin Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, and Kiyo Bank. SmartBank plans to launch an AI assistant service using generative AI from next spring onwards.

The funds raised this time will also be used to recruit personnel to strengthen the organisation and for marketing, compliance, data analysis, and engineering activities to acquire users to promote the development of household finance improvement services.

Founded in 2019, SmartBank provides a financial management app designed to help users effectively manage their household spending, offering deposit accounts with budgeting tools and prepaid cards.

SmartBank’s Series B funding has been earmarked for marketing activities aimed at attracting new users by promoting the development of household finance improvement services that utilise generative AI.

B/43

Smartbank has developed and is providing a new expense management service called B/43, which is a set of a prepaid card and a household accounting app that allows automatic household accounting through the use of cashless payments.

Recently, the company has expanded the functionality of the B/43 app, including the implementation of credit card and bank account linking functions and AI receipt reading functions, so that expenses other than prepaid cards can also be managed with just one app, supporting the visualisation and soundness of household finances.

In recent years, rising prices have led to an increased desire to save money, and with the increase in dual-income households finding it difficult to find time to manage household finances, as well as the spread of cashless payments, B/43 has captured the market need for a hassle-free way to visualize household finances, and the total number of downloads of the app has exceeded one million in the three years since the service began.

SmartBank Survey

SmartBank conducted a survey on the extent of wasteful spending in households under the supervision of the Nikkei Research Institute, and found that the average annual wasteful spending per household was about $677.13, and the total amount of wasteful spending in Japan as a whole was estimated to be about $37.2 billion.

Although there are fluctuations due to differences in income, etc., this suggests that many people have the potential to reduce this wasteful spending and contribute to creating surplus funds to pursue the things people originally wanted to do, such as asset management, travel, and self-investment, in order to create a world where people no longer have to worry about money.