I was wondering why it was all so quiet on Runa Capital front last week, but the announcement of its new funding deal has just come in. This time Runa Capital invested $8 million in a Russian mobile payment startup uBank.
uBank, founded by Laura Ashizheva in 2011 and launched at the end of 2012, allows its users pay for bills and transfer funds through its mobile payment app, which comes preinstalled on all Samsung and Fly smartphones, top sellers in Russia and CIS.
Users can top up their accounts using credit cards at zero percent commission and then pay for mobile phone bills, utilities or miscellaneous items such as speeding tickets using the app. The app can also be used for P2P payments or scheduled payments and reminders. What is also handy, that based on those payments the app offers analysis of monthly expenses.
What is amazing is that within two months, over 250,000 downloaded the app on iOS and Android, and in Google Play it is the most popular finance app (I suppose, the preinstalled base helped spread the word).
uBank plans to further grow its userbase in Russia and expand globally.
We tried to make sense of mobile payment market in Russia earlier this year, and uBank was not then on our radar yet.
