Irish unicorn Wayflyer eyes further growth after securing $300m debt financing

12 May 2022

Wayflyer co-founders Jack Pierse and Aidan Corbett. Image: Wayflyer

The financing comes just months after the Dublin-based company raised $150m in funding to support e-commerce businesses.

Wayflyer, the revenue-based financing and growth platform for e-commerce companies, has secured $300m in debt financing from JP Morgan.

The Irish unicorn plans to use this to increase its market share and reduce its cost of capital, allowing it to offer more competitive rates to e-commerce businesses in the US, western Europe and Australia.

Wayflyer provides e-commerce merchants with a range of financing and marketing analytics tools to help them access working capital, improve cash flow and drive sales.

It has already started deploying the financing received from JP Morgan.

This news comes just a few months after Wayflyer raised $150m in Series B funding, valuing the start-up at $1.6bn and making it Ireland’s latest tech unicorn.

JP Morgan was one of the backers of that all-equity round, which was led by DST Global and QED Investors.

Wayflyer said the combination of the Series B funding and the new debt financing line will help the company on its growth trajectory.

“With e-commerce revenues set to hit $5.4trn in 2022, the need for competitively priced funding solutions is greater than ever,” said Aidan Corbett, CEO and co-founder of Wayflyer.

“The $300m debt financing we’ve secured and partly deployed from JP Morgan will help us seize this opportunity, and enable us to offer the most competitive rates in the market to more effectively help ambitious e-commerce businesses realise their growth potential.”

Dublin-based Wayflyer has been expanding rapidly since it was founded in 2019 by Corbett and Jack Pierse. Its monthly capital deployments increased by more than 900pc last year to hit $100m.

Its headcount also jumped by 525pc last year and it plans to hire more than 400 people across its global offices by the end of this year.

Last week, Wayflyer announced that it is moving into the influencer market with the purchase of creator funding provider Peblo. Following this deal, the e-commerce financing company said it would advance more than $500m to creators over the next year.

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Sarah Harford was sub-editor of Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com