Fuze Network, a payments technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, has raised $2.5 million in Series A financing, according to a new SEC filing. The round was led by Dana Stalder at Matrix Partners and Meyer Malka, founder of Bling Nation and co-founder of Lemon, Inc., now of Ribbit Capital.
The company had previously closed on $1.2 million in seed funding, from NYC’s Metamorphic… → Read More
The service has a slightly different focus than some of the crowdfunding platforms that have sprung up as of late, like CrowdTilt for example (which the TechCrunch team used this summer). Unlike those services, PayByGroup isn’t about raising money for a cause with everybody throwing in what they can. Instead, it’s meant to streamline the still somewhat cumbersome process of getting a group of… → Read More
Apple decided to forgo NFC support with the release of the iPhone 5, but that hasn’t stopped payments companies from continuing to invest in the space. MasterCard released a software development kit for its mobile PayPass technology with support for the Android and Blackberry OS 7 platforms. The toolkit will allow mobile operators and third-party developers the ability to integrate support for… → Read More
As a small startup, the mobile payment space shouldn’t be appealing. Every carrier and credit card company seems to have its own system, the space is fragmented, crowded and no standard for payment mechanisms has emerged. (QR codes, really?) To compete, startups need lots of capital, and then they need hardware. Which is why you have to give LevelUp some credit.
Since relaunching its mobile… → Read More
Wallaby Financial, a startup that’s building a cloud-based wallet that will optimize the rewards, points, airline miles, and other benefits consumers earn when charging purchases, has just closed a seed round of $1.1 million. The round was led by Founders Fund Angel and included participation from WI Harper Group, SLP Ventures, Lion Wells Capital and other individual investors, including some… → Read More
As promised earlier this summer, the Accel-backed payments platform Braintree is opening up its doors to non-U.S. merchants for the first time, with the launch of its service across Europe and in Canada. As of today, merchants in 27 countries can access the company’s payment gateway, recurring billing, and vault credit card storage features. They will also be able to accept payments in over 130… → Read More
Because the mobile payments landscape wasn’t muddy enough, the collaborative effort between some of the biggest retailers to launch their own mobile payments network is set to be announced later today according to a report emerging this morning from The WSJ. A group of over a dozen retailers, including Walmart, Target, 7-11, and Sunoco, Inc. is calling itself the Merchant Customer Exchange (or… → Read More
Online payments startup WePay is today announcing lowered pricing and new API features, as it celebrates the one-year anniversary of its WePay Payments API. The company, which is backed by $19.2 million in venture funding, is actually a bit older than just one year, however. As you may remember, WePay first emerged from Y Combinator in 2009 as a simple tool to collecting group payments. The… → Read More
Mobile payment service LevelUp, an off-shoot of Boston-based SCVNGR, announced this morning that it has raised $9 million from T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom. The investment is the second tranche of a larger funding round and brings the total raised to just over $21 million. SCVNGR itself has raised over $31 million. As a result of the investment, T-Venture Senior Manager… → Read More
Ready to enter a cardless future but not quite sure about NFC? The Protean Echo might be for you. This clever project essentially captures your credit cards onto one multi-purpose card that can hold up to three cards at a time.
It works like this: you scan your magnetic stripe cards into a smartphone app using a supplied dongle. You can then “upload” three cards to the Protean Echo and select… → Read More
CardSpring, an ambitious payments startup founded by former Netscape engineers, is building a platform that connects web and mobile applications to payment cards. It’s a card-linked payment infrastructure that can work across any bank or card type (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, AmEx, etc.), because it sits in the cloud, and is attached to the payments network directly. This enables developers to… → Read More
Openbucks, a startup creating a gift card-based payment network (and a former TechCrunch Disrupt finalist), is announcing today it has closed $4.8 million in Series A funding, in a round led by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. Also participating were Terry Semel, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital, Clearstone Ventures, Morado Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, Inspiration Ventures, CrunchFund, SV Angel and TiE… → Read More
Mobile payments platform Dwolla has the potential to disrupt how money moves in the new, digital economy. It’s an idea of how a payments network should look, if one had been built today, as opposed to tacking on digital payments to the legacy system that is the current credit card network. But there has been one big problem for end users of Dwolla – no one had any clue where they could actually… → Read More
Gartner estimates that more than 10 percent of small businesses have been the victim of theft and/or fraud, with losses totaling more than $2 billion. That’s because small businesses are more or less forced to rely on a variety of ad hoc and manual processes, paper checks and online bill pay systems, which mean complexity, higher security risks and less control. MineralTree emerged out of stealth… → Read More
BancBox, a startup that’s been flying under the radar over a year, is launching its new payment services platform today. At first, you might think the most apt comparison is that of Stripe, which also offers a developer-friendly way to accept payments on web and mobile. But BancBox goes much further than transactions. The platform lets developers build all sorts of payment services within their… → Read More
PayPal, the eBay-owned online payments service that is making significant inroads into mobile, is giving its website an overhaul to make it easier for its 100 million+ users to pay and get paid, find help, and potentially start using some of the newer services that PayPal is pushing hard to grow. The redesign also happens to look a lot more touch-friendly — perhaps a sign of how much tablets… → Read More
A major milestone for disruptive payments platform Dwolla: the company has just switched on FiSync, its real-time money transfer system which aims to replace the outdated – and much slower – ACH process. ACH, or Automated Clearing House, is the traditional means for making electronic payments here in the United States. A 40-year old system, ACH enables money to move from Bank A to Bank B, but the… → Read More
E-commerce and m-commerce payments platform Braintree has major news today: it’s expanding operations outside of the U.S. and will now become available to thirty additional countries worldwide. The new international offering will operate in a private beta period over the next few months and will then launch publicly in the third quarter of 2012.
Braintree powers and automates online and … → Read More
GoCardless, the Y Combinator-backed startup founded in 2010 by Oxford graduates Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson, is today launching a new product called PayLinks which aims to be something like a Bit.ly for payments. With its dead simple interface, anyone can create a shortened, tweet-friendly link in around 60 seconds, the company claims, allowing you to start collecting money… → Read More
Betting big on the future monetization opportunities to be found in the “smart TV” ecosystem is boxPAY, a company which is now bringing the carrier billing option to TV apps and services. With boxPAY, consumers can pay for Smart TV apps or make in-app purchases by charging those purchases to their mobile phone, no registration or credit card required. Instead, the purchase would show up on the… → Read More
It may not be the end, but the prognosis doesn’t look good. Social micro-payments platform Flattr is taking an unkind hit in terms of its future growth opportunities on mobile, the company details on its blog this morning. After being integrated into popular third-party podcast manager Instacast back in February, Apple decided at the beginning of May to reject the app from the iTunes App Store… → Read More
Mobile payments and identity verification company Jumio is introducing its Netswipe Mobile SDK today, which allows developers to add credit card scanning functionality to their mobile applications. The SDK (software development kit), is available now for iOS, but an Android version is coming soon, the company says.
To jump start usage, Jumio is also waiving transaction fees for the SDK’s… → Read More
Mobile and online payments and ID verification startup Jumio has received an additional Series B investment led by Citi Ventures, a unit of global financial services company Citi. The funding follows Jumio’s $25.5 million Series B from March, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Although Citi’s investment amount is not being disclosed, to date, Jumio has raised $35.4 million in funding.
Other… → Read More
Online payment platform WePay just announced that it has raised $10 million in a new financing round. This round was led by Ignition Partners. Two of the company’s existing investors, Highland Capital Partners and August Capital also participated in this round. WePay, which bills itself as the “anti-PayPal,” is a Y Combinator alumni and was founded in 2008. The company raised a total of $9.15… → Read More
SalesVu, the maker of a mobile payments service designed for business customers, is launching a major update with SalesVu 2.0, live now in the iTunes App Store. The company is somewhat similar to Square, in that it also includes a dongle that plugs into an iPhone or iPad and works alongside an accompanying mobile application. However, the company is focused on providing tools that address more… → Read More
Mobile payments platform Beamit, which focuses on international money transfers between the U.S. and developing markets, has just closed a $2.4 million seed round led by Founder’s Co-op, with participation from Bezos Expeditions (the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos), TomorrowVentures (the investment vehicle for Eric Schmidt) and a small group of angel investors.
The funds will be… → Read More
Moving everyday transactions into the digital realm seems an inevitability, but as yet there have been no breakout successes. Sure, there are fringe efforts like Square (which relies on existing card and bank infrastructure) and Google Wallet (which is a bit early to the NFC party), but there’s nothing that the average consumer would see and think “yes, that is as simple as handing the merchant a… → Read More
Card.io, the mobile payments startup which recently partnered with PayPal on the company’s new Square rival PayPal Here, has some big news: it’s no longer a “mobile” payments startup. That’s right – Card.io is now available for the web, too. With the launch of Card.io Webscan, as it’s being called, web developers can access the company’s card-reading technology which “sees” your credit or debit… → Read More
Following its recent raise of $2 million in seed funding, the still invite-only mobile payments startup Zipmark is today announcing the launch of its developer program and API. The New York-based company, founded in 2010 by Citigroup alum Jay Bhattacharya and CTO Jake Howerton, leverages the existing check processing network to allow users to avoid credit card fees while also eliminating the risk… → Read More
Disruptive payments network Dwolla confirmed today it has raised $5 million in Series B financing in a round led by Union Square Ventures. Also participating in the round are Village Ventures, Thrive Capital, Artists and Instigators and Paige Craig of Betterworks. As a part of the deal, Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures will join Dwolla’s board.
The company says that additional funding… → Read More
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