Raisin, the well-capitalised fintech startup that offers a pan-European marketplace for savings and investment products, has acquired Fairr, a German startup disrupting the pensions industry. Terms remain undisclosed, although I understand the price was in the “double-digit Euro millions” range.

The majority of the deal was cash, although some Fairr investors exited with a mixture of cash and Raisin stock. Fairr’s investors included IBB Investitionsbank Berlin, Transamerica Ventures , Pro7Sat.1 Accelerator, and Söderberg & Partners.

Raisin says the acquisition of Fairr is part of a strategy to enter the €12 trillion European pension and retirement savings market, which is a natural extension to the fintech’s current focus on deposits and investments.

The idea is to be able to offer an all in one online marketplace that only needs to be signed up to once, including the mandatory regulatory checks, in order for customers to purchase savings, investments and now pension products.

Fairr’s founders are said to be staying on and will take leading roles in the newly formed investments and pension products division at Raisin, which will include Raisin’s existing investment product line WeltInvest. “The entire fairr team will also join them in becoming part of the larger Raisin family,” says the company.

Meanwhile, I’m told that one of the main reasons for choosing to acquire Fairr is that the startup has shown it can successfully streamline and digitise the heavily-regulated German pension market, including being able to offer a more cost-effective and flexible version of the German state-funded “Riester” pension product. It also offers products targeting company pensions and supplementary retirement savings.

“Just as Raisin focuses on providing savings that are more customer-friendly and more transparent than comparable products on the market, Fairr has been dedicated to doing the same with its own solutions in retirement savings,” says Raisin. “Fairr’s low-cost, fully digital offer is based on an ETF investment approach. The company has received multiple awards and seen its products recommended by both Germany’s premier financial advice publication and top consumer finance guide”.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Raisin, the platform for savings and investments, acquires pension startup Fairr

Festicket, the U.K.-headquartered festival booking platform, has acquired U.K.-based ticketing and cashless point-of-sale (POS) platform Event Genius. The sale also includes Event Genius’s consumer facing brand, Ticket Arena, while further terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.

Founded by Reshad Hossenally, Event Genius offers a complete event solution for event organisers, spanning things like online ticket sales, POS software, ticket scanning, seat reservations, marketing and analytics. It has powered major events including Wales Rally GB, Motion Bristol, Annie Mac’s Lost & Found Festival, Summer Daze, Ibiza Rocks and BPM Festival.

Festicket co-founder and CEO Zack Sabban tells me that over the last couple of years the company has invested heavily in the B2C side of its platform to help users discover new festival experiences and book festival trips, and this year that has paid off with accelerated growth from long tail events. Therefore, in order to continue on this growth trajectory, it was agreed with the board that Festicket needed to invest more in B2B tools to operationally scale the way it works with its network of ~8,000 suppliers.

“Giving them more independence on the Festicket two-sided platform via self-service tools would allow us to be more deeply integrated into suppliers’ supply chains and ultimately optimise our units economics,” he says. The Event Genius acquisition is clearly the start of this.

To that end, the resulting “Event Genius by Festicket” will be an end-to-end platform for organisers and fans alike, says Festicket, providing a complete offering for the live entertainment industry.

The platform aims to bring together “technology and expertise” covering ticketing, accommodation, travel & packages, marketing, data & analytics, access control, POS/cashless payment services, fan engagement tools, and more.

Meanwhile, Event Genius’s 20+ staff, based in Leeds in the U.K., are joining Festicket. This also includes Event Genius founder Hossenally, who becomes Festicket Chief Supply Chain Officer.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Festicket acquires Event Genius and Ticket Arena