Bits secures €12 million to scale automation in financial crime compliance
Bits, a Stockholm-based provider of compliance and onboarding infrastructure for regulated fintechs and banks, has raised €12 million in Series A funding to deepen automation across financial crime workflows and expand coverage of additional regulatory and data sources.
The round was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Unusual Ventures, and Alliance Ventures. Haval van Drumpt, chief executive of Tre Sweden, also invested. The financing follows a €4 million round in 2023.
Compliance is shifting from a cost center to a platform layer
European banks and fintech companies face a difficult balancing act: meeting tightening regulatory expectations while delivering fast, fully digital customer experiences. On the risk side, fraud and money laundering threats continue to evolve, while supervisors and regulators increasingly expect stronger controls, clearer audit trails, and faster remediation of issues.
Many institutions still run compliance operations on fragmented stacks—local data providers, market-specific setups, and manual reviews that vary by jurisdiction. That fragmentation can slow onboarding, raise operational costs, and make cross-border expansion painful, often forcing teams to rebuild compliance processes market by market.
According to Jonatan Klintberg, CEO and co-founder of Bits, the company’s goal is to make compliance a growth enabler rather than a bottleneck. “Our customers need to scale, convert, and remain compliant at the same time,” he said, pointing to demand for unified workflows that reduce operational drag without compromising oversight.
One platform for KYC, KYB, AML and fraud workflows
Founded in 2022 by former operators from Klarna, AWS, and Tink, Bits positions itself as compliance infrastructure that unifies onboarding, risk assessment, and continuous monitoring. The company says its platform supports KYC and KYB workflows across more than 100 jurisdictions and connects to a broad ecosystem of data sources and electronic identity providers.
The company argues that a single, pan-European approach can reduce the complexity of operating across multiple markets. With one integration, customers can access European company registries, beneficial ownership data, politically exposed persons (PEP) and sanctions lists, and fraud-related signals—components that are typically assembled from multiple vendors and internal systems.
Bits says its automation can reduce manual case handling by 50% to 70% and speed onboarding and approval times by four to six times. Tasks that previously took weeks—or even months—can reportedly be completed in days, and in some cases hours, while human reviewers focus on higher-risk customers and exceptions.
Investor thesis: fewer point solutions, more consistent decisioning
Alstin Capital framed the opportunity as structural rather than incremental. “For regulated entities, compliance is becoming a platform challenge, which cannot be addressed by point-solutions,” said Alexander Meyer-Scharenberg, principal at Alstin Capital. He added that Bits “unifies AML and fraud workflows into one system with consistent decisioning and auditability,” highlighting operational consistency and traceability as key product requirements for regulated customers.
Industry attention has increasingly shifted toward automation across the full risk lifecycle—onboarding, transaction monitoring, investigations, and reporting—rather than standalone tools that solve only one slice of the process. The funding environment has reflected that theme. In 2025, Berlin-based Taktile raised €51.5 million to expand its AI-driven decisioning platform across onboarding, credit, fraud, and compliance workflows, underscoring continued investor interest in modern compliance and risk infrastructure in Europe.
Regulatory pressure is rising across Europe
The timing of the round also comes as Europe moves toward deeper harmonization of anti-money laundering rules and supervision. Market participants are preparing for higher expectations around governance, data quality, and controls—especially for institutions operating across borders.
Meyer-Scharenberg pointed to the direction of travel: “With AMLA and the EU’s move toward a single AML rulebook, expectations are rising and many institutions will need to re-evaluate whether their compliance technology remains fit for purpose and fully compliant.”
For fintechs trying to grow across the continent, the challenge is not only compliance accuracy but also speed. Digital onboarding is now table stakes, yet many organizations still depend on manual reviews and brittle integrations that can introduce friction at the moment customers are most likely to abandon an application.
How Bits plans to use the new capital
Bits said the Series A proceeds will go toward expanding product capabilities, increasing automation across fraud and financial crime detection workflows, and adding further European data coverage. The company also plans to scale its go-to-market organization as it targets expansion across the DACH region and the UK.
Existing customers named by the company include Qliro, Alisa Bank, and Walley. With fresh funding and sustained investor focus on compliance infrastructure, Bits is betting that regulated firms will increasingly prefer unified platforms that combine onboarding, monitoring, and investigation workflows—especially as cross-border requirements converge and scrutiny intensifies.
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