← Embedded Finance Index 2026

Bolt

“Can Bolt embed financial services — payments, lending, insurance, and business tools — deeply enough into its ride-hailing and food-delivery platform to become the financial OS for European gig workers and SMB merchants?”

Founded2013
HQTallinn, Estonia
FoundersMarkus Villig
Total raised~$1.4B+
Latest roundDebt Financing (most recent per Crunchbase)
Valuation$4.75B (as of 2021 Series E)
IndustryMarketplace / Gig economy
The story

Founded in 2013 as Taxify, a basic taxi-hailing app in Estonia, Bolt rebranded in 2019 and rapidly diversified into food delivery, grocery delivery, e-scooters, e-bikes, and car-sharing to compete with Uber and Deliveroo across emerging and European markets. Its embedded finance story began with payments infrastructure for rides and food, and expanded in 2025 when it partnered with finmid to offer working-capital loans to restaurant partners on Bolt Food — moving toward becoming a financial services layer for the SMB merchants and gig-economy drivers on its platform.

Last 12 months
2025-08
2024-09
2026-04
2026-05
Product timeline
2013
Founded as Taxify, a taxi-hailing app in Estonia.· pivot
2019
Rebranded from Taxify to Bolt; expanded to rides, scooters, and e-bikes across Europe and Africa.· pivot
2020
Launched Bolt Food, a food and grocery delivery service across multiple European markets.· banking
2021
Raised €600M Series E at $4.75B valuation; expanded car-sharing (Bolt Drive) and micromobility.· acquisition
2023
Launched Bolt for Business, a centralised platform for corporate ride management, expense reporting and integrations.· banking
2025
Launched Bolt Food Finance in Latvia in partnership with finmid, embedding working-capital lending for restaurant and store partners.· lending
Regulated entities
2
regulatory licences held by Bolt
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in Bolt’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Worldpay
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
KYC
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
4 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.