Manchester-based Ryft, a marketplace payment platform, has announced it has raised a £5.7m Series A investment round to fund the development of tech that will empower banks, such as Danish payment service provider Clearhaus, to compete with global payment providers from the likes of Stripe Connect and Adyen.
The funding will also be used to ‘double down’ on the development of efficient payment solutions, while accelerating Ryft’s international expansion into new markets. The team is also looking to boost its revenue growth over the next 18 months while also ‘scaling’ its headcount.
The round, which takes total investments in Ryft to £7.4 million now, was led by EdenBase, with participation from GPOS Investments, British Business Bank, Pembroke VCT, Sidebyside, and Ingenii VC. The fundraising round was also joined by strategic angel investors, including executives at PayPal.
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So who is behind Ryft? The fintech was founded by entrepreneurs Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie, who previously built a digital platform called Butlr which was acquired by OrderPay in 2021.
Following its £1.2m Seed funding in 2022, Ryft has secured its FCA license, partnered with American Express and Visa, and has become a Mastercard Network Enablement Partner.
Now, the entrepreneurs are aiming to transform a $20 trillion acquiring ecosystem by giving acquiring banks the technology needed to automatically split payments and process payouts at a ‘lower cost’ than solutions offered by Stripe Connect or Adyen.
Sadra Hosseini, CEO and co-founder of Ryft, said: “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.”
Jason Druker, chief commercial officer at SFC Capital, said: “Ryft is solving a critical challenge in the payments space with a highly scalable solution. We continue to be impressed by the team’s execution and vision, and we’re excited to keep supporting them as they scale. This round marks another step in their journey, and we look forward to seeing their impact grow.”
Eric Van der Kleij, General Partner at EdenBase, hailed Sadra and Alex as “tried and tested entrepreneurs” with first-hand experience of the “headaches that finding a payment partner brings”.
“As a result, they have created a unique solution that allows business owners to focus on growth, secure in the knowledge that their payments are being handled in a compliant, quick and cost-effective way. The renewed focus on growing the acquirer side of the business demonstrates their commitment to promoting efficiency and transparency in the marketplace and platform payments space, aligning with the modern demands of Commerce 2.0.”
