Accumulate, a Swedish mobile payment and security solution provider, received an investment from The Sixth Swedish National Pension Fund (The Sixth AP Fund; Sjätte AP-fonden). The Sixth AP fund is the so called Swedish state fund for long-term risk capital, investing in small and medium-sized growth companies. http://www.apfond6.se/en/Accumulate, a Swedish mobile payment and security solution provider, has received an investment from The Sixth Swedish National Pension Fund (The Sixth AP Fund; Sjätte AP-fonden). The Sixth AP fund is the so called Swedish state fund for longterm risk capital, investing in small and medium-sized growth companies. The size of the investment has not been disclosed.
Accumulate had previously an angel round in 2008 in which angels Carl Palmstierna and Patric Svanberg invested in the company. Carl Palmstierna is currently the chairman of the board.
Accumulate’s CEO and co-founder Stefan Hultberg comments that the new funding will be used in expanding the business of Accumulate’s mobile service platform Flexion and in launching its new mobile security solution to market.
The mobile service platform Flexion allows for flexible pricing and license control of mobile applications and games, and is managed by Accumulate’s UK subsidiary. The company has business for example with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung, and despite strong revenue growth needed new cash for working capital due to the notoriously long payment cycles in the mobile business. According to Stefan, Accumulate will also strengthen its operations team. Accumulate claims to have served 6 million end users up to date with Flexion.
Accumulate’s mobile security solution can be utilized, for example, for securing credit card purchases and person-to-person money transfers, for secure logins and signing, and enabling payments by mobile phone. The first pilot project is starting next month, according to Stefan. Also an OpenID based solution is coming still this summer. Stefan identifies the banking segment as the most interesting target for the solution, though banks can be slow in adapting new technology. In addition, Accumulate is also looking into other industries and especially the enterprise security market. In order to reach the enterprise market Accumulate will utilize a channel sales strategy, having just hired a channel sales manager a couple of weeks ago for building up the partnerships.
The press release (in Swedish; here is Google translated version).
