Image credits: Payrails
Payrails, a Berlin-based fintech company, has officially emerged out of stealth and secured $6.4M (approx €5.7M) in a seed round of funding to launch its next-generation financial operations (FinOps) platform.
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with HV Capital, Delivery Hero CFO Emmanuel Thomassin, Flixbus founders Jochen Engert, André Schwämmlein and Daniel Krauss, as well as Dominik Richter, founder of HelloFresh, joining the round.
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Fund utilisation
With the funds, Payrails claims it is launching their cloud-based operating system, Payrails OS, to help enterprises manage payments and build financial services for customers across the globe.
The company has already started working with select clients using Payrails’ infrastructure to improve their payment performance.
The capital injection will also allow the fintech company to invest heavily in its team and product development. The German company aims to grow its headcount from 30 to 100 by the end of this year.
Orkhan Abdullayev, CEO and co-founder of Payrails, says “We are incredibly excited about the journey ahead of us. As we have experienced countless challenges related to building, operating, and scaling payments and financial services globally, we empathise with enterprises’ pain points. Our ledger-based operating system, Payrails OS, targets these challenges directly and allows enterprises to unlock value fast. In Andreessen Horowitz and HV Capital, we have found partners that share our vision and long-term view on how to enable high-growth companies to craft their payment experiences and financial services globally.”
Payrails: What you need to know
Orkhan Abdullayev, Emre Talay and Nicolas Thouzeau, who built and scaled the fintech arm of Delivery Hero, founded Payrails in late 2021.
With Payrails, businesses can utilise a single API to scale their payments and financial capabilities via smart payment routing, consolidated money movements, and payment reconciliation via ledgers.
Simultaneously, enterprise clients can track their payments’ performance through unified analytics, providing more control and visibility over a company’s financial operations and helping reduce payment fraud.
Payment-Service-Providers (PSP) significantly benefit from the solution as well. Payrails offers PSPs an easier way to onboard new customers and enables payment acceptance for marketplaces.
The company caters to enterprise clients across all industries, including marketplaces, e-commerce, quick-commerce, and mobility players.
Investors
Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz provides entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights in innovation, executive and technical talent, market intelligence, business development, and marketing and brand-building.
Seema Amble, Investment Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says “As companies scale globally, they need infrastructure that allows them to quickly and easily add payment gateways and payment methods to be able to accept payments from their customers, as well as optimise their payment routes and authorisation rates. The Payrails team deeply understands the payment challenges facing merchants as they grow. The founders bring a wealth of experience and a strong track record of execution to build solutions for this category, helping customers minimise complexity as they grow and scale.”
HV Capital invests in Internet and technology companies through various generations of funds. The company has already invested in around 225 companies, including Zalando, Delivery Hero, FlixMobility, Depop, and SumUp. The company supports startups with capital ranging between €500,000 and €50M.
Barbod Namini, Partner at HV Capital, says, “We are equally convinced of Payrails’ next-generation operating system as we are impressed by Payrails’ outstanding team. Given their in-depth experience from Delivery Hero, one of Europe’s largest tech champions, Payrails’ founding team uniquely understands the struggles and costs associated with complex, enterprise-level financial operations and has proven their capabilities. Based on the excellence of the team and their truly disruptive offering, we are excited to support them on their path to becoming the FinOps solution of choice for large enterprises.”
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