Melbourne payments startup Verrency has raised $10 million in Series A funding, as it solidifies its presence in Australia and overseas.
The raise brings the total funding for the three-year-old startup to $20 million, with investors including Aussie investment firm Alium Capital, as well as high-net-worth individuals and family offices.
Verrency has also announced it will be launching its Series B round later this year.
Headed up by founder and chief David Link, Verrency is a platform allowing banks, card issuers and other financial services providers to add new products and services without replacing legacy infrastructure or migrating to new technology.
“Most of a bank’s interaction with its retail customers is on or around the moment of payment,” Link tells StartupSmart.
The thing that keeps customers interested is not only about how they pay, he adds.
“It’s about the services the customer deems valuable.”
Around the world, banks are limited by legacy infrastructure that is stopping them from innovating. Verrency’s API platform “enables them to innovate without throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, Link explains.
It’s also working with challenger banks and other fintechs, both to help them add value to their own payments processes, and to help them connect to the legacy banks.
“We’re madly passionate about helping other fintechs to succeed.”
Verrency now has offices in Melbourne, Silicon Valley, Singapore and London, and has long-term agreements in place with institutions including Banco Davivienda in Colombia, and Emirates NDB in the UAE, as well as with Aussie neobank Volt.
It also has a marketplace platform allowing banks to connect to an ecosystem of more than 30 partners.
Although he doesn’t disclose specific figures, Link says revenue is “growing significantly”, and notes the startup has clients in four continents.
It also has a pipeline of commercial contracts which is “extensive and growing around the world”, the founder says.
It may be only three years old, but Verrency already has a significant global footprint. And according to Link this has been the plan from the offset.
The reasoning behind this is partly because the financial industry is “not a space with fads”, he explains.
“We play in a part of the financial infrastructure where security, reliability and trust is incredibly important,” he says.
“Everything in our space is long-term.”
Link’s solution not only required a complex tech solution, it was also based on trust, and the strength of relationships. Building the technology and building the relationships both took time.
The solution had to be fully completed before the founder took it to clients, he says.
Now, Verrency has become a first-mover in this space, he adds. But it was important to go global as soon as possible, in order to keep that momentum going.
“If you approach it the other way … it would take too long,” Link says.
This latest funding will be mainly focused on implementation, and for capitalising on the growth Verrency has seen overseas.
“As we have contracts now that are closing, we’re industrialising our implementation capability around the world,” the founder says.
It will also be focused on additional commercialisation, bringing contracts that are currently in the pipeline to closure.
Then, the startup will turn its attention to the Series B raise, but not necessarily because it needs the capital.
“We’re well funded, there’s just a lot of demand in the space,” Link says.
“The market is just waking up to the fact that this battleground of customer relationships, that we’ve seen for a while … is very real,” he adds.
“It’s not a short-term problem. And solutions are also not short-term.”
When it comes to running a fintech — or any startup — Link’s advice is to, as far as possible, strive for perfection.
“Certainly have a vision and continually test it in the market space,” he advises.
When you know you’re industry, and you know you’re solving a big problem, a lot of success comes down to just putting the hard work in, he says.
“You’re growing a company, you’re solving industry problems, and there’s no magic to it,” he explains.
But when you’re building the tech, and when you’re implementing it with clients, “always focus on being world class”, he adds.
“You don’t always succeed, but you’ve always got to set that bar … whether it’s internal and payroll or meeting client expectations and exceeding expectations.”
A lot of this stuff “isn’t that sexy”, Link admits, but if you focus on achieving high quality in everything you do, “then you’ve got something the market values, and things will go well”.
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