Estonian startup Cino raises €3.5M

Estonian fintech startup Cino has raised €3.5M in a seed round led by London’s Balderton Capital. British Connect Ventures and Estonian Tera Ventures also participated in the round, alongside angels, including Barney Hussey-Yeo (founder of Cleo).

Founded in Tallinn in 2022 by Elena Churilova, Edward Poot, and Lina Saleh, Cino is a fintech startup that has developed a platform that allows couples or groups of people to share an account with each other.

Cino links each person’s bank account to one virtual payment card. Once a virtual card has been created, group members choose their auto-split ratio (what fraction of each transaction is paid by each member), and then each transaction is auto-split amongst the group members. The startup allows users to split the bills when they want to pay for the rent, utilities, groceries, trips, dinners, drinks, and others. The service works in most European countries, including Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Cino plans to use the funds received this time to expand its operations in the UK.

In 2023, as a result of two rounds of financing, Cino raised €925K and €1.4M from the British investment company Atomico, the Berlin-based Heartful and the Estonian Tera Ventures and EstBAN.

Tera Ventures is an international investment firm based in Estonia. The founding partners are Andrus Oks and Stanislav Ivanov. Tera Ventures invests out of €45M second fund in startups from the Baltics, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and the Czech Republic.