Irish paytech Ryft (website) has closed a seed round led by SFC Capital, bringing its total funding to £1.2 million. Other investors include the ex-founder of Shutterstock and the founder of LoveFilm. The paytech enables automated next-day payouts for marketplace businesses and their merchants for a single flat fee per transaction.
According to the startup, Ryft is like Stripe Connect without the high fees and long wait times for payouts. The idea for the company came from 18-year best friends and co-founders Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie, who started with their first business, a mobile ordering marketplace app for pubs and bars.
During the pandemic, they used it to reach over one million customers and 500 active pubs. The two recognized a gap in the market for the profitability of microtransactions and fast payouts, and thus Ryft was born.
They claim that many marketplaces don’t know how to comply with PSD2 regulations. They see this as a unique opportunity to gain market share by offering a solution that fixes this problem and takes the administrative burden off finance teams. Hosseini commented, “We are both incredibly excited to be working with SFC Capital to enhance our ability to provide seamless support to marketplaces and merchants in the industry and solve the current issues surrounding complex money routines under PSD2 regulation.”
“Ryft was created to care for everything, so your business doesn’t have to.” Ed Stevenson, investment manager at SFC Capital, said, “We’re excited to work with Ryft to help marketplace businesses with a unified payments platform designed for B2B platforms that provides a seamless experience for merchants and marketplaces.”
“Following the success of their first venture, Sadra and Alex have put together the essentials to solve the problems faced in the enterprise payment platform landscape.”
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