UK-based decentralised payments platform Ryft has raised £5.7 million in Series A funding to help acquiring banks take on industry giants Stripe Connect and Adyen.
The round, which takes total investments in Ryft to £7.4 million, was led by EdenBase, with participation from GPOS Investments, British Business Bank, Pembroke VCT, Sidebyside, and Ingenii VC.
Ryft was borne out of the previous experience of founders Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie, who built and sold a mobile ordering marketplace app for pubs and bars, and spotted a gap in the market for microtransactions and fast payouts.
The firm helps businesses efficiently process, manage and monetise payments at scale in a secure and compliant way. Over 1500 businesses have already implemented Ryft, which claims customers that have switched from Stripe report cost savings of up to 62% in payment fees.
The startup says it gives acquiring banks the technology needed to automatically split payments and process payouts at a much lower cost than solutions offered by Stripe Connect or Adyen.
It also gives marketplaces and platforms the ability to hold funds until specific conditions are met through a delayed payments feature, facilitated by an escrow license. This enables acquiring banks to remain competitive in the modern commerce landscape by efficiently fulfilling the payment needs of marketplaces and digital platforms.
Says CEO Hosseini: “Acquiring banks and most businesses were built for the one-to-one transactions of Commerce 1.0. However, in the era of Commerce 2.0, where transactions within a single marketplace involve numerous parties, financial institutions are struggling to deliver payment operations that meet the evolving needs of their customers.
"As a result, they’re unable to compete with the likes of Stripe Connect and Adyen whose solutions currently dominate the payments ecosystem despite high fees, complicated integrations, poor support, and prolonged payment wait times.
"At Ryft, we have the technology that allows acquiring banks to overcome these hurdles and we’re actively exploring several strategic partnerships to solve this issue in the payments industry.”