Payaut Lands €8 Million Seed Round to Expand Across Europe

Payaut, an automated payment solution for online platforms and marketplaces, has announced it has closed an €8 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund, with participation from existing investors LocalGlobal and Entrée Capital.

Payaut, which provides a range of financial solutions for online marketplaces, will use part of the funding to expand its operations across Europe with the roll out of its new multi-currency platform. This will enable customers to accept payments in currencies including USD, GBP, JPY and AUD (*). By expanding beyond EUR payments, Payaut will also be positioned to enter markets outside of Europe. Payaut plans to begin its expansion drive by increasing its presence in Germany, Southern Europe and the Nordics.

Founded in late 2019, Payaut also provides automated solutions such as reconciliation, balance management, invoicing, seller verification through KYC checks, and split payments. The API-driven platform enables customers of any size to efficiently and securely manage their payments and finances while also remaining compliant with legislation such as PSD2.

Crucially, Payaut acts as an intermediary between sellers and different Payment Service Providers (PSPs). As a result, marketplaces are not dependent on one single PSP but instead can use multiple providers such as Mollie, Adyen, PayPal or Stripe at the same time.

In addition to further developing its platform, Payaut will also increase its team from 25 to 40 employees over the next year.

Ernst van Niekerk, CEO and Founder of Payaut, said: “This is a critical step in Payaut’s journey. The funding will enable us to fulfill our ambition to become the solution of choice for marketplace platforms worldwide. Not only will we be able to expand our platform to provide new solutions, we will also be able to increase our presence across a number of major new markets. “We’re very pleased Gradient Ventures has invested. It’s a great vote of confidence in our team and underlines how we have created an offering that appeals to marketplaces and platforms of all sizes.”

“In the past, marketplaces and ecommerce companies built split payment systems in-house or were tied to a payment gateway solution. With Payaut, small and medium-size enterprises are empowered to handle KYC/AML, split payments, and multi-PSP configurations themselves,” said Anna Patterson, Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures. “We’re excited to support Ernst and his team as they make this crucial technology more widely available.”