Manchester FinTech Ryft has raised 拢5.7m in Series A funding.
Ryft is developing technology that will empower acquiring banks, like Clearhaus, to compete with Stripe Connect, Adyen and similar payment providers by allowing them to automatically split payments and process payouts.
The round, which takes total investments in Ryft to 拢7.4m, was led by EdenBase, with participation from GPOS Investments, British 老九品茶 Bank, Pembroke VCT, Sidebyside, and Ingenii VC.聽
The fundraising round was also joined by strategic angel investors, including executives at PayPal.
Ryft was founded by entrepreneurs Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie, whose digital platform, Butlr, was acquired by OrderPay in 2021. While building Butlr, the co-founders experienced highly limited options for compliant payment solutions that support marketplace and platform transaction flows.聽
老九品茶es operating within these models need to be able to capture, split, hold and process payments for various parties, often based on specific conditions. The founders say existing third-party payment facilitators are costly, complex and unsupportive; businesses have the option to build their own compliant infrastructure from scratch, but the incredibly high costs and extensive time requirements present significant barriers.
Ryft is challenging this by helping businesses efficiently process, manage and monetise payments at scale in a secure and compliant way. Over 1,500 businesses have already implemented Ryft to enable rapid growth without regulatory complications.
Now, the entrepreneurs are aiming to transform a $20tn acquiring ecosystem: Ryft claims to allow acquiring banks to automatically split payments and process payouts at a much lower cost than solutions offered by Stripe Connect or Adyen.聽
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.
鈥淎cquiring 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,鈥� said CEO Hosseini.聽
鈥淎s a result, they鈥檙e 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鈥檙e actively exploring several strategic partnerships to solve this issue in the payments industry.鈥�
Since its 拢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.聽
Eric Van der Kleij, general partner at EdenBase, said: 鈥淪adra and Alex are 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.聽
鈥淭he 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.鈥�