ID Finance raises €545m to modernise Spain's consumer credit market

International investors back Plazo's AI-driven credit platform in one of Spain's largest fintech funding rounds in recent years.

By Disrupts Editorial Team Wed, 28 October 2026 AI level 2 of 5

AI level 2 of 5: drafted by our AI editorial assistant from the company's announcement; fact-checked, edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean

White server cabinets with glass doors displaying networked equipment and glowing teal cables line a bright server room, illuminated by overhead lights and natural light from a large arched window.

ID Finance, the Barcelona-based consumer finance group operating across Spain and Mexico, has closed €545 million in combined debt and equity funding from a consortium of international investors including Spice Expeditions, Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), Kingsway Capital and New York-headquartered asset-based lender i80 Group. The capital will be deployed to scale Plazo, the company's flagship mobile credit app, and to extend its AI-powered underwriting, identity verification and fraud detection infrastructure.

The round is described by the company as one of the largest closed by a Spanish fintech in recent years, and arrives on the back of a notably strong 2025. ID Finance reported €243 million in revenue last year, with profit nearly doubling year-on-year. Plazo itself turned profitable in 2025 after growing revenue 300% and expanding its user base to over 400,000 clients, a validation milestone that the company says underwrote investor confidence in the current raise.

AI-driven underwriting at the core

The fresh capital is not simply a war chest for geographic expansion. A significant portion is earmarked for deepening Plazo's AI infrastructure, specifically the risk-scoring and fraud-detection stack that the company says enables it to extend credit to consumers underserved by traditional Spanish banks. Alexander Dunaev, co-founder of ID Finance, described the thesis plainly: "Responsible, AI-driven underwriting and a genuinely better product experience can scale together."

That framing matters for the broader fintech landscape. Spain's retail credit market has historically been dominated by legacy banks whose underwriting models rely on narrow credit-bureau data. Alternative lenders such as ID Finance are positioning AI-led decisioning as a structural edge, processing richer behavioural and transactional signals to price risk at the individual level. The model has direct parallels in the UK and Brazilian BNPL markets, where similar AI-native lenders have taken significant share from incumbent card issuers.

Alongside the funding announcement, ID Finance confirmed the launch of Turrón by Plazo, a combined e-money account, debit card and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) product targeting both online and in-store purchases. The company is now actively expanding its merchant partner network, positioning Turrón as a route to embed Plazo's credit infrastructure deeper into everyday retail spending.

Cross-sector capital and the endowment angle

The composition of the investor consortium is itself a convergence signal worth noting. WashU's participation via its endowment management arm reflects a broader shift in how large institutional pools, university endowments, sovereign funds and family offices, are allocating into fintech credit infrastructure outside their domestic markets. University endowments, traditionally weighted towards US private equity and hedge funds, have been quietly moving down the capital stack into asset-based lending vehicles, attracted by the floating-rate characteristics and the short duration of consumer credit portfolios.

i80 Group's role as asset-based financier is particularly significant: the firm had already provided $150 million in debt financing to ID Finance in early 2024 to grow Plazo's credit book, and is now deepening that commitment. Asset-based credit structures of this kind are becoming a standard growth mechanism for fintech lenders seeking to scale loan books without diluting equity, a playbook that has been refined in the US market by lenders including Affirm and Upgrade, and is now being exported into European consumer credit.

With Plazo targeting another 300% growth in 2026 and a full BNPL and e-money suite now live, the strategic question is whether ID Finance moves to seek a Spanish banking licence or a broader European payments institution authorisation. Either path would bring the company into direct contact with the European Central Bank's evolving framework for AI-driven credit risk models, a regulatory frontier that no major jurisdiction has yet fully resolved.