Qred and Liberis are combining into a single SMB finance group, backed by Nordic Capital. On 18 June 2026, Nordic Capital announced an agreement to acquire Liberis and further invest in Qred, bringing the two businesses together. Qred is the Stockholm-based digital bank for small businesses, founded in 2015, running on a full Swedish banking licence with a deposit-funded balance sheet across Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, and has served more than 80,000 businesses. Liberis, founded in London in 2007, is an embedded lending platform that delivers funding through more than 30 partners across Europe, the UK and North America, and has financed over 70,000 small businesses. The combined group will have around 600 employees, revenue above €250m, more than 53,000 active SMB customers, and roughly 11.5m addressable merchants across 17 countries. Emil Sunvisson, Qred's founder, becomes Group CEO, and Verdane joins as a new co-investor. Terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to be completed later this year, subject to regulatory approval.
Qred sells direct, Liberis sells embedded
So what does each side actually bring? Qred sells direct: Via its own brand and its own app. This is backed by a full banking licence since 2023, and a balance sheet funded by customer deposits. Nordic Capital first backed it in 2021, and it has grown across seven markets on comparatively little outside equity, landing on the FT's list of Europe's fastest-growing companies six times. What it has never really done is embed. Liberis is the opposite case, a pure embedded play since 2007 that lends through partner platforms rather than reaching customers directly. Put the two together, and the group spans both channels, with term loans, revenue-based financing and working capital lines across direct and embedded distribution. Qred brings the licence, and the balance sheet; Liberis brings the reach into other people's platforms.
Liberis had gone quiet before the deal
Why now, and who needed whom? Let's start with Liberis. When I covered Deliveroo Capital in February (EFR), the choice of Liberis seemed a little surprising, because the company had gone relatively quiet compared with YouLend, Banxware and finmid, all of which were more visibly active in European embedded lending. That is not to write Liberis off, as it works with partners including Klarna, eBay and Worldpay and has funded over $1bn. Also, Deliveroo was one of its higher-profile European launches in a while. Still, the momentum had cooled. So one read could be that the company or some of its owners were actively looking for an exit.
Why Qred wanted an embedded channel
The more interesting angle sits on the other side. Qred has built real scale selling direct, and that kind of scale tends to generate inbound. A platform serving tens of thousands of small businesses across seven markets is likely to be asked to integrate its lending into other people's products more than once. I suspect Qred reached a point where selling direct was no longer enough, and that buying Liberis is the fastest way to add an embedded channel it had never built itself. Did Liberis actively seek a buyer, or did Qred seek distribution? Well, the result is the same group: a direct SMB bank on one side, an embedded specialist on the other.
