CardFlight, the New York-based company that enables developers to integrate in-person card payments into their own app, announced today that it has raised $1.6 million in seed-round funding, led by ff Venture Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology startups.
John Frankel, Founding Partner at ffVC, has joined CardFlight's board of directors.
"As consumers are spending more of their time on mobile it is a natural place for payments to become ubiquitous. The space will not be dominated by a couple of players, but many retailers will want to have their own custom solution," said Frankel. "This is where CardFlight's magic works. It makes in person card payments a breeze for retailers to build into their own customized solutions. It is a platform that has come of time for a huge emerging market."
While a number of payments startups are focused on online and e-commerce payments, CardFlight focuses on the 90% of credit card transactions that are 'card present' and happen in person. Additionally, CardFlight clients are typically vertical solution providers or large and medium-sized merchants, in contrast to companies that only provide closed mobile payment offerings that do not allow customization or white-labeling.
CardFlight provides its clients with a mobile payments platform that includes:
1. Encrypted magnetic stripe readers that work through the audio jack of smartphones and tablets.
2. Software Development Kits (SDKs) for both iOS and Android platforms. The CardFlight mobile payments SDK enables clients to easily integrate payment acceptance into their own applications.
3. A payment gateway service that lets the client use virtually any merchant account from their choice of processors.
CardFlight's clients retain full control over their own application's user interface and user experience, and can also integrate payments acceptance into their other functionality such as CRM, inventory management, fulfillment, reporting and analytics.
"By using CardFlight, developers get the benefits of an integrated product, without having to deal with the typical complexity of building payments solutions from scratch," said CardFlight Founder and CEO Derek Webster.
"With CardFlight, our clients can integrate mobile payments into their apps in a matter of hours, while still customizing their mobile application and other solutions exactly how they wish."
Also investing in this round were leading venture capital funds and angel investors, including Payment Ventures, Apostolos Apostolakis, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Plug & Play Ventures, and Great Oaks Venture Capital. CardFlight plans to utilize the capital to accelerate the speed of its product development efforts and to expand its client base.