Business Wire

MiddleGame Ventures Announces €150m FinTech-Focused Fund

25.11.2019 12:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release

Share

MiddleGame Ventures (MGV), a fintech-focused investment firm, announced today that it had raised a new fund targeting post-seed, series A and series B lead investments in Europe and North America.

MGV’s Venture Fund I has achieved its first close, with a final close target size of €150MM. It will invest in and partner with B2B and B2B2C startups driving the transformation of financial services from analog to digital and from centralized to decentralized, with an emphasis on middleware and back office solutions. Its remit extends to enabling technologies such as RegTech, Digital Identities, “FinData” and crypto-enabled infrastructure across banking, asset management, insurance, payments, and capital markets.

The Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) are anchor investors in the new MGV fund, whilst S&P Global is included among other institutional, strategic and family office investors. The fund remains open to additional institutional and private investors ahead of a final close later in 2020.

FinTech investment veteran Pascal Bouvier is co-founder of MGV along with Michael Meyer and Patrick Pinschmidt. Pascal said: “We are pleased to have new capital from substantial investors to support great, transformational businesses across Europe and the US with our highly focused fund. Our investors agree that specialist funds with experience working with entrepreneurs, incumbent financial institutions and regulators are best placed to thrive in an environment characterised by financial and technological cross-currents and significant regulatory constraints. We are excited to put our platform to work on behalf of investors and the next wave of innovators solving hard problems and re-architecting the industry.”

Patrick Nickels, chairperson of the Luxembourg Future Fund Board of Directors, added: “We are pleased to be an investor of MiddleGame Ventures fund aiming to support early stage FinTech companies. The Luxembourg Future Fund believes this commitment will help to strengthen the FinTech industry in Europe and generate positive spillovers in Luxembourg. This is a strategic sector for Luxembourg for economic diversification and we are delighted to contribute to its continuing development.”

“We are delighted to be supporting MiddleGame Ventures as an anchor investor in its new fund," said the EIF’s chief executive Pier Luigi Gilibert. “The EIF has a strong commitment to innovation in Europe, and we hope that this fund, with its focus on FinTech entrepreneurs, will assist us in that goal.”

MGV partners have invested over USD $300 million in early stage financial services firms over the past decade including Ripple, Tandem Bank, SimpleSurance, Coverhound and CompareAsia. MGV’s new fund has already made three representative investments in a capital markets digital platform and banking as a service and big data analytics startups in the UK (Nivaura, Railsbank and Gardenia Technologies).

ENDS

About MiddleGame Ventures

MiddleGame Ventures (MGV) is a leading financial services technology venture capital firm. Its focus is on supporting innovation in the financial sector as organisations reinvent themselves to compete and service clients in the digital age.

Central to MGV’s thesis is that disruption in banking, payments, capital markets, asset management and insurance business models by new intermediaries will drive a fundamental re-architecting of incumbents and create entirely new value chains.

MGV is well-positioned to help this financial services renaissance based on the founding team’s extensive investment, operational and regulatory experience.

MGV was established in 2018 by Pascal Bouvier, Michael Meyer and Patrick Pinschmidt. Bouvier and Meyer have substantial FinTech investment experience having co-founded Route 66 Ventures and consulted with Santander InnoVentures. Pinschmidt was a senior official at the US Treasury Department following a decade as a sell-side research analyst covering financial services for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

MGV is headquartered in Luxembourg with offices in Dublin and Washington DC.

MGV also owns and operates NadiFin, a growth stage accelerator for European startups (www.nadifin.com) based out of Luxembourg.

For more information on the MGV team, strategy and portfolio, please visit www.middlegamevc.com.

About the European Investment Fund

The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank group. EIF’s central mission is to support Europe’s micro, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) by helping them to access finance. EIF designs and develops venture and growth capital, guarantees and microfinance instruments which specifically target this market segment. In this role, EIF fosters EU objectives in support of innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth, and employment.

About the Luxembourg Future Fund

The Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) is a EUR 150 million equity fund set up in 2015 by the Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) and combines a EUR 120 million commitment from SNCI with EUR 30 million from the EIF. In addition to its role as investor, EIF acts as the adviser of LFF, performing investment advisory, operational, reporting and execution tasks. The LFF invests in Venture Capital funds and co-invests in early and growth stage innovative technology SMEs. Its objective is to provide its investors with a risk commensurate return on investments while at the same time fostering the sustainable development and diversification of the Luxembourgish economy.

To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Contact information

Patrick Pinschmidt
Telephone: (1) 202-750-4622
patrick@middlegamevc.com

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

emnify Appoints Sacha Herrmann as Chief Financial Officer and Christian Friis as Chief Revenue Officer2.10.2026 18:12:00 EEST | Press release

emnify, a global leader in IoT connectivity, today announced the appointments of Sacha Herrmann as Chief Financial Officer and Christian Friis as Chief Revenue Officer, effective immediately. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261001902751/en/ emnify Appoints Sacha Herrmann as Chief Financial Officer and Christian Friis as Chief Revenue Officer The appointments follow the recent naming of Kenneth De Spiegeleire as Chief Executive Officer and Frank Stoecker as Executive Chairman of the Board. Together, these leadership changes strengthen emnify financial, operational, and commercial capabilities as the company enters its next phase of international growth. “We have proven momentum. Our ambition is to now turn it into global category leadership,” said Kenneth De Spiegeleire, CEO of emnify. “That requires sharper focus, disciplined execution, and the right capabilities in the right seats. Sacha brings financial lead

Tacton Appoints Former IFS Executive Merlin Knott as Chief Commercial Officer to Accelerate Global Growth and Scale Beyond CPQ2.10.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release

Tacton, a global leader in Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software and configuration solutions for manufacturers of complex products, today announced the appointment of Merlin Knott as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). In this role, Knott will lead Tacton’s global commercial organization, including marketing, sales, and pre-sales, aligning the teams responsible for bringing Tacton’s solutions to market, and driving value to its customers and partners globally. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261002794882/en/ Merlin Knott, Chief Commercial Officer, Tacton Knott joins Tacton with decades of experience building and scaling commercial organizations across the enterprise software industry. Most recently, he held senior leadership roles at IFS, the world’s leading provider of Industrial AI software, where he led global partner and channel operations before becoming President of the company’s Enterprise Service Manageme

EDW Presents 2026 Data Quality Award to Repeat Winner Domivest2.10.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release

European DataWarehouse (EDW) presented its fifth annual Data Quality Award at the 2026 TSI Congress in Berlin. This year, EDW's Best Data Quality – Deal of the Year (2026) award was presented to Domivest B.V. for its transaction Domi 2023-1 B.V., recognising the firm's outstanding commitment to accurate, complete, and consistent reporting. The award is based on EDW's proprietary data quality scoring methodology, which evaluates transactions against thousands of validation rules and checks. Data quality excellence is not a one-off achievement. The fact that the same issuers continue to rank among the top performers year after year demonstrates that superior data quality is the result of sustained commitment, robust processes, and ongoing investment. "Receiving the Data Quality Award for a second time means a great deal to us. Transparent, accurate loan-level data is key to investor trust in our transactions, and we are grateful to European DataWarehouse for recognising the work our trea

ILiAD Biotechnologies Expands BPZE1 Public Health and Commercial Potential with Publication of Pediatric Phase 2b Study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases2.10.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

ILiAD Biotechnologies, Inc. (ILiAD), an advanced clinical stage biotech company focused on the prevention and treatment of disease caused by Bordetella pertussis, today announced the publication of results from its Phase 2b SUPER (Stand Up to Pertussis) clinical trial in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. This randomized, double blind, placebo- and active-comparator-controlled trial demonstrated that BPZE1, a live attenuated intranasal pertussis vaccine, induced robust nasal mucosal immune responses in healthy children aged 6 through 17 years (LINK). The study demonstrated that a single intranasal dose of BPZE1 induced nasal mucosal immune responses against all Bordetella pertussis antigens tested and was well tolerated, both when administered alone and when co-administered with a tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis (Tdap) booster vaccine. The multi-center Phase 2b trial enrolled 366 participants across 16 sites in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Costa Rica and included participants

NIQ Brings New AI and Automation Capabilities to Retail Space Planning and Merchandising2.10.2026 13:45:00 EEST | Press release

NielsenIQ (NYSE: NIQ), a leading consumer intelligence company, today announced new AI and automation capabilities for NIQ Spaceman®, its retail space planning and merchandising platform trusted by more than 600 retailers across 65+ countries. The enhancements help retailers create store-specific planograms up to 50 times faster, identify execution and compliance gaps, and scale merchandising decisions across their store networks through expanded cloud-based access. "Retailers are under increasing pressure to localize assortments, execute consistently across stores, and respond more quickly to changing shopper behavior," said Natalie Williams, SVP, Product at NIQ. "These enhancements help simplify that process by embedding agentic AI directly into merchandising workflows and automating traditionally manual planning tasks. That means teams can spend less time building and updating planograms and more time acting on opportunities. With greater automation, retailers can improve productivi

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye