Turning Any Smartphone Into a Payment Terminal, Czech Fintech Tapaya Has Raised EUR 1 Million
Prague-based fintech startup Tapaya has raised €1 million, nearly CZK 25 million, in a pre-seed funding round. The round was led by Czech VC fund DEPO Ventures and the UK’s Passion Capital, with Latvia’s BADideas.fund also joining the investment. The new capital will help Tapaya complete its formal certifications and further develop its proprietary infrastructure, which enables banks, fintechs and other software platforms to easily embed payment acceptance directly into their apps.
WanderWallet Raises EUR 430K to Make It Easier for Tourists to Pay Without a Local Bank Account
WanderWallet, a travel-first wallet that lets foreigners pay like locals across Latin America, has announced a EUR 430K pre-seed round from BDPartners and DEPO Ventures. The service is already live in Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, where instant payments have effectively replaced cards as the primary way people pay. In Brazil alone, Pix now processes more transactions than Visa, Mastercard, and all other payment methods combined. For millions of international visitors, however, these local systems often remain out of reach due to practical barriers.
Czech Startup Market Sees Investor Outflow as Slow Exits and Weak Investment Environment Stall Growt
The Czech startup ecosystem is approaching a critical threshold. According to the latest investor survey conducted by investment firm DEPO Ventures in cooperation with the Czech Startup Association and its partners, the share of first-time investors has declined significantly, while one third of existing investors plan to scale back or halt their investment activity this year. Investors cite low market liquidity, a shortage of high-quality startup opportunities, and weak investment infrastructure as the main barriers. At the same time, data and insights from the sixth edition of the survey point to possible solutions: better access to information, greater sharing of experience and deal flow, and systemic support in the form of tax incentives.
Strategic Investments of the Future: Engaged Investments Conference Brings Investors from Across Eur
This October, Prague’s National House Vinohrady will become a key meeting point for the European tech scene. Over two days, hundreds of investors, startup founders, and innovation leaders will gather at Engaged Investments 2025, an international conference organized by DEPO Ventures and J&T Ventures. The event will take place on October 22–23, 2025, offering participants fresh insights from the startup world and a unique opportunity to connect capital with the tech shaping the future. This year will spotlight critical infrastructure and strategic innovation.
Central Europe's Most Advanced, and Growing with the Engaged Investments Conference
European startups are now looking back on the boom of 2021 with nostalgia. That year, they managed to raise an impressive 117 billion euros from investors. However, the following years saw a sharp decline. By 2023, this had dropped to just 54 billion, and in 2024, it further dipped to 51 billion, according to Crunchbase data. Early-stage funding (seed and angel investments) followed this downward trend.
Czech Republic Has Plenty of Capital, but Quality Startups Remain Elusive
Czech investors were active again in 2024, willing to commit venture capital to startups. However, nearly two-thirds (62.2%) of them flagged the lack of quality startups as the biggest challenge last year, marking an almost 20% increase compared to 2023. These findings come from a survey conducted by the investment group DEPO Ventures.
Business Proposals in Minutes, Not Hours: DEPO Ventures and StartupYard Invest in Ydoca
Automating responses to inquiry forms and generating business proposals—this is what the integrated AI platform developed by the startup Ydoca brings to the market. Their technology seamlessly integrates into every step of the process, leveraging generative AI to boost efficiency by up to 70%. As part of its pre-seed investment round, the startup secured a total of CZK 2.3 million in funding, with DEPO Ventures contributing CZK 1.8 million and StartupYard investing CZK 500,000.
Subscriptions to furniture, fashion or garden technology as a new trend. DEPO invests in Circuly.
German startup Circuly is developing a software solution that allows companies to introduce and scale subscriptions for products such as bikes, cars or furniture. In an investment round led by funds Neoteq and Gateway Ventures, Circuly raised a total of CZK 13,475,000, which it will use to expand its solution into new industry segments and support its expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. Czech DEPO Ventures also participated in the investment round.
Founder, it’s your chance to win $1M! Startup World Cup Regional Finale is coming back to Prague.
Startup founders have an exciting opportunity on the horizon as the world’s largest startup competition, the Startup World Cup, returns to Prague on October 24th.
European startups got less money this year,but the sentiment is improving. Target: AI & climate tech
Petr Šíma: Forget about the United States, Europe has already overtaken it in the number of new startups. Moreover, it is the only region where the volume of capital invested in startups this year will be higher than in 2020, by 18 percent. Let's leave aside 2021 and early 2022, when startup valuations skyrocketed and investors bought whatever they could. That was an anomaly. This year, $45 billion will flow into European startups, according to a fresh analysis by Atomico. This is the third highest figure after the two years mentioned above and confirms that the ecosystem is on a strong footing.