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Ryft, a PSD2 and FCA-approved decentralised payments innovator, announced today a successful £5.7 million Series A round to fund the development of technology that will empower acquiring banks, like Clearhaus, to compete with Stripe Connect, Adyen, and similar payment providers in the market. 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. 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. Businesses operating within these models need to be able to capture, split, hold and process payments for various parties, often based on specific conditions. 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, and customers that have switched from Stripe report remarkable cost savings of up to 62% in payment fees.
Now, the entrepreneurs are aiming to transform a $20 trillion acquiring ecosystem. Ryft 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 licence. This enables acquiring banks to remain competitive in the modern commerce landscape by efficiently fulfilling the payment needs of marketplaces and digital platforms.
Since its £1.2 million Seed funding in 2022, Ryft has secured its FCA licence, partnered with American Express and Visa, and has become a Mastercard Network Enablement Partner. Ryft also integrated with multiple acquirers to achieve payments orchestration that delivers 99.9% uptime. Impressively, Ryft became profitable just two and a half years after launch and has consistently tripled its gross merchandise value year-over-year. The team is looking to repeat this robust revenue growth over the next 18 months while also scaling headcount.
In addition to their strategic focus on enabling acquirers, Sadra and Alex will use the latest funding to enhance the modularity of Ryft. They aim to double down on the development of innovative and efficient payment solutions while accelerating Ryft’s international expansion into new markets.
