Payments, is an intelligence startup founded by execs formerly at Braintree and PayPal that has raised $10 million in funding already in its early stages.
Having started its activity in the same year 2021, Payments, totally oriented to remote transactions, is building a combined platform of data and microservices, based on APIs consumed by third parties that, according to its strategy, can be integrated with any payment system. The ultimate goal is to drive better performance and optimization of a company's existing payment infrastructure.
The concept was born from the experience of the founding team in their previous companies. CEO Klas Bäck and CPO Albert Drouart have held executive positions at Braintree/Venmo and PayPal for the past eight to nine years (Braintree/Venmo was acquired by PayPal). They both also worked at payment processor Netgiro (later sold to Digital River).
On the other hand, Daniel Blomberg, the company's chief technology officer, has launched seven startups (and sold five) in the past two decades.
As a curiosity: Bäck and Blomberg grew up in the same small rural town in Sweden, and have both lived abroad, in different places, for the past two decades.
“The challenge that we face for our clients is that, in many cases, they don't have the knowledge, the data and the tools to be able to execute a strategy around payment processing or the ability to optimize it,” said Bäck, who led operations Braintree Internationals from the start and worked for PayPal after the startup's acquisition. "This means they are much slower and have a much harder time doing everything they need to do and produce the expected results."
In real terms, this can lead to higher operating costs, lost revenue and "unnecessary friction, making executing business strategy much more difficult than it should be," Bäck added.
So Payments set out to build a SaaS platform with API-based microservices to help businesses streamline payment processing and execution.
“We want to give them the information and data they need to answer: 'what does it mean? How can I make it better? How can I run faster? Back said. "We want to give them those tools in an easy-to-consume way."
It was enough to earn the trust of Underscore VC and Point72 Ventures, who co-led the investment round in Payments, as well as business angels like former Venmo CEO and current Accel investor Amit Jhawar; Bill Ready, president of commerce and payments at Google; Billy Chen, vice president of financial partnerships at Finix and former chief payments officer at Uber; and Rich LaBarca, general manager of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights at Microsoft.
Short term, Payments offers services such as “immediate” payment data viewing, automatic notifications about payment trends or problems, and up-to-date bank identification number (BIN) details to manage customers and control costs. Looking ahead, the company plans to offer network tokenization and account upgrade services.
“Medium and large companies are getting a reasonable boost in sales online or through their own mobile application. Once they start reaching significant numbers, their payment infrastructure is holding them back,” Bäck said. "We want to help them scale and run more with fewer resources."
Since day one, the company has been working with clients on a global scale, from 50-person companies to others selling billions of dollars worth of products and services online.
The company plans to use its new capital mainly to expand its 20-person team, specifically engineers, Bäck said.
Investors are optimistic, naturally.
Chris Gardner, a partner at Boston-based Underscore VC, said he was drawn to Payments because his team has a decades-long history of working with target customers, "making them uniquely qualified to serve them."
"But their potential market is all the e-commerce merchants in the world, and there are millions of them," he added. "Those are two key ingredients in a winning solution."
In his opinion, the offer of Payments it is unique in both its service capabilities and delivery model to customers. Over time, the team plans to offer more than a dozen individual microservices that solve specific payment optimization challenges, all accessible through APIs.
"And since there is no 'one size fits all,'" he said, "they are available fully unbundled, free to try, and priced individually when based on scalability."
Dave Matter, Partner at Point72 Ventures, believes that as commerce becomes increasingly digital, merchant payment mechanisms are becoming more complex and difficult to manage.
«Payments It is led by two of the most successful payment product experts in the business, and their relationships, domain expertise and first-hand experience with these pain points in the market is of essential value.
