Blue Star investee Sthaler raises more money for pay-by-finger tech

Blue Star Capital announced on Thursday that one of its investee companies, Sthaler, has successfully raised £2m at a pre-new money valuation of £30m.

The AIM-traded firm said that represented a “significant” uplift to the value attributed to Sthaler of £23m at its previous fundraise of £3m in July last year.

Blue Star invested £50,000 into Sthaler in June 2015 as part of a total raise of £0.45m, with a post-money valuation at that time of £3.4m.

The latest round of investment in Sthaler valued Blue Star’s stake of 0.9% at £0.3m.

“Sthaler is an early stage identity and payments technology business which enables a consumer to identify themselves and pay using just their finger at retail points of sale,” Blue Star’s board said in its statement.

It said Sthaler jointly developed ‘Fingopay’ in conjunction with Hitachi, using VeinID technology.

“Infrared light maps the unique vein pattern in a customer's finger,” it explained, with that biometric signature matched to a template held in the cloud, verifying the payment “in seconds”.

“It is considered more secure than other biometrics such as fingerprint.”

Over the last 18 months, Sthaler had been piloting Fingopay, with thousands of students at Copenhagen Business School now able to use the product in their campus canteen.

Blue Star said the “world first” at a self-service kiosk was an “excellent example” of how the technology could be used.

Sthaler worked with Denmark's national debit card operator Dankort to deliver the technology.

Dankort, part of the Nets group, was also working with Sthaler to look beyond mobile to biometrics as the future of payment.

The technology was being showcased to Scandinavian banks and businesses, with a view to wider adoption across the region.

Sthaler's Copenhagen launch followed a successful trial at Brunel University in London, where students could use Fingopay to buy groceries at the Costcutter convenience store on campus.

Blue Stat said Sthaler installed Fingopay readers at points of sale, and helped Brunel move towards the goal of a cashless campus.

Transactions were verified by Worldpay, so customers could arrive in store without wallet or phone and pay securely using their finger.

Sthaler reportedly had new launches in the pipeline scheduled for later in 2018.

“We are pleased to see Sthaler is continuing to attract investment as it begins to successfully roll out its offering in the retail and hospitality sectors,” said Blue Star CEO Tony Fabrizi.

“We look forward to Sthaler announcing further customers over the coming months.”