Tera Ventures participates in Cino's €3.5M seed round
Tera Fund II company Cino has raised a €3.5 million seed round led by Balderton Capital with participation from Tera Ventures, Connect Ventures, and angels, including the founder of Cleo.
The real-time shared payment app allows a group to split the bill and pay their share directly from whatever bank account or wallet they choose. After emerging from Tallinn, Estonia, and operating in continental Europe since 2023, Cino will now use the funding to expand to the UK.
Led by co-founder and CEO Elena Churilova (formerly of Bumble and Booking.com) and COO Lina Saleh (ex-Cornell University), Cino appears to be making waves among Gen Z, who dislike “financial awkwardness” and among whom joint bank accounts — for payment of things like shared household bills — are going the way of the dinosaur. The app also leverages the network effect to scale, as every new Cino user can invite two to four others for free within their first six months of joining.
Cino’s journey began when Churilova was working at Bumble and started splitting expenses with colleagues: “I tried every single tool out there possible to figure out how to make my weekends not into accounting exercises,” she said. “Then I just had this moment of thinking, like why is no one building a way to pay together?"
For more information, visit: https://www.balderton.com/news/cino-raises-e3-5m-to-revolutionise-shared-payments-with-the-first-virtual-card-that-splits-and-pays-group-bills-instantly/“For too long, people have accepted standard bill-splitting, debt tracking, and repayment requests as the only way to manage shared expenses – simply because there was no alternative. Cino’s viral growth demonstrates that there is an alternative which users love. We’re excited to support Elena and Lina as they redefine how money moves between people and groups,” Balderton Capital partner Greta Anderson said.