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Banked is a fintech startup that offers an alternative to card schemes. Consumers are able to pay without entering financial data, no need to create an account, no financial details are shared, authorization is biometric and the merchant receives the funds in real time. Businesses use it to drive customer engagement and loyalty with incentives and rewards embedded inside the payment process. It also claims its fees are up to 90% lower than traditional payment methods. Back in 2020, the London-based fintech raised £2.35 million in seed funding.

It’s now raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by Bank of America and Edenred Capital Partners. These U.S. investors will be part of the company’s planed U.S. expansion.

Existing investors Acrew, Force Over Mass, Firestartr, OM2, Love Ventures, Kuvi Capital and Paul Forster (founder of Indeed.com) also participated again. New investors include Sidekick, 9Yards and Huey Lin (ex-PayPal). This means Banked has raised a total investment to date of more than $30 million.

The market for account-to-account payments is growing and is predicted to reach $43 billion by 2026 in Europe, according to research by Allied Market Research.

Faiz Ahmad, head of global transaction services with Bank of America, said: “We are pleased to be a lead investor for Banked and they have already demonstrated a proven ability to develop unique e-commerce solutions.”

Banked competes to some extent with TrueLayer, Trustly and Volt, but it doesn’t just provide rails and infrastructure, as it has more of an end-to-end experience.

Brad Goodall, Banked CEO, told me: “We are building a branded network for the benefit of all merchants and consumers — merchants who work with us benefit from being part of the ecosystem for example a more seamless checkout, customer awareness and comfort with the payment method — alongside all the obvious benefits fo much cheaper payments, lower fraud, instant refunds etc.”