Rixty, Online Payments For The Unbanked, Scores $1.24 Million In Venture Round

Rixty, an alternative online payment platform that can already be found in many popular social games, has closed a $1.24 million venture round. The investment was led by San Francisco based Javelin Venture Partners, with participation from Accelerator Ventures, First Round Capital, Freestyle Capital, Nueva Ventures, SoftTech VC and several angel investors.

The company lets users pay for online purchases, particularly virtual goods in games, with cash. Users go to Coinstar machines and choose to have a credit issued instead of cash, or purchase prepaid cards in convenience stores. In total there are 20,000 locations that sell Rixty prepaid credits/cards.

Rixty is an excellent payment option for the unbanked – usually teenagers – who don’t have access to their own credit or debit cards. Instead of using their parents’ card(s), or billing to their mobile phone (or getting involved in questionable offers-for-currency), users can simply pay cash at retail stores and then use the credit number for the online purchase. Rixty also lets users split a credit among different games, so a single prepaid card or Coinstar credit doesn’t have to all be used at one place.

The company had previously raised a $25,000 angel round from Keval Desai, who recently left Google to join Digg as vice president of product.

The company is located in San Francisco.