The story
Early years (2011 - 2014)
Founded by Christoph Rieche and James Dear in October 2011, iwoca started trading in March 2012. The company was founded to offer custom-built loans for small businesses that struggled to access finance from traditional banks.
iwoca secured a £2 million equity investment from Beyond Digital in early 2013. In January 2014, the company announced it had raised £5 million in investment led by venture capital firm Global Founders Capital for UK and European expansion.
Initially, the business focused exclusively on e-commerce businesses, but in April 2014, iwoca expanded its lending to all types of small businesses.
Growth (2015 - 2019)
iwoca entered the German market in 2015, and established itself as one of the largest Fintech small business lenders in the country. In the same year, a European Investment Fund (EIF) COSME agreement was agreed with the goal of iwoca lending £40 million to more than 3,000 UK small businesses. By July 2015, the company was reported to have seen 250% year-on-year growth in issuance when raising $20 million in equity from investors including CommerzVentures and venture capital firm Acton Capital Partners in its Series B round.
In 2018, iwoca doubled its revenues to £48 million. In the same year, iwoca also became the first small business lender to use Open Banking rules to connect large banks, in a partnership with Lloyds.
In 2019, the company raised £150 million in equity and debt capital, in a Series D funding round led by Augmentum. That year, iwoca also won £10 million from the government-backed Capability and Innovations Fund, which was part of a Banking Competition Remedies (BCR) grant. The company agreed to use these funds, along with a £13 million commitment from its own capital, to develop new products and open offices outside of London. This led to the launch of iwocaPay and the opening of an office in Leeds.
Covid-19 (2020 - 2021)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, iwoca was one of the lenders approved for the Coronavirus Business Interruption Scheme (CBILS). iwoca also took part in the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS), although the company stopped issuing loans through the Recovery Loan Scheme in 2022.
In October 2021 the company's research found that only one‑third of small‑business owners experiencing poor mental health sought professional help. To address this, iwoca partnered with Spill to make free video therapy sessions available to all UK SME owners.
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In 2021, iwoca was named the fastest-growing fintech by the Sunday Times International Track 200.
Post-covid growth (2022 - Present)
In January 2023 iwoca expanded its existing funding facility with Pollen Street Capital to £170 million. In October 2023 it secured a £200 million funding line from Barclays and Värde Partners.
In May 2024 iwoca announced £270 million in new debt funding, including £150 million from Citibank and Insight Investment for expansion in Germany and £120 million from Barclays and Värde Partners for the UK, taking cumulative investment above £1 billion since 2012.
iwoca achieved net profitability in Q4 2022 and has remained profitable since.
In 2026, iwoca made the following economic contributions through its lending, as reported in its annual SME impact report, conducted by Capital Economics:
£4.1 billion GDP contribution to the UK and German economies.
62,600 jobs supported in the UK and Germany.
£1.2 billion tax revenue generated in the UK and Germany.
From Wikipedia’s article on Iwoca, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4