Paysend secures $125 million in VC funding

Up until last week, VC had poured over $3.59 billion in startup funding with Thunes getting $60 million.

This week, Paysend, an Edinburgh-based B2B services provider, has secured $125 million in its latest round of funding which was led by One Peak with other participants from Growth Capital, Hermes GPE Innovation Fund and Plug and Play.

The funding secured would be used towards the company’s international expansion and ‘speed up product innovation, enabling it to further accelerate its impressive growth trajectory’.

According to the press release, the company has reached over 3.7m consumers, 17,000 SMEs and 110 receiving countries since its founding in April 2017 and the company is eyeing ‘the $133tn opportunity in cross-border payment flows through its vertically integrated platform and innovative card-to-card payments solution’.

It also noted that it is a different platform since it “removes the need for third-party acquirers or processors which increase cost and complexity, delivering savings and efficiency back to end-user consumers and SMEs”.

The company says that the cost for SMEs to operate on a global platform is still high and there are many complexities which include global multi-currency bank accounts, cross border acquirers, paying staff and suppliers in multiple geographies and currencies.

The company is aiming to reduce the economic barriers for the companies to enter into the payments market by providing ‘immediate access to transfer money to any cardholder around the world’.

The company has a partnership with major companies such as Visa, Mastercard and China Union Pay as a principal member and certified processor. It recently opened its US and Canada operations and secured a partnership with Alipay in order to grow its global footprint.