Ivy, an API for instant bank payments, has secured €7 million ($7.7 million) in a seed investment round led by European VC Creandum.
Payment and transaction fees can accrue because of card networks, gateways and wallets that are all involved in today’s online transactions. Ivy’s solution is to allow merchants to accept instant bank payments literally at the checkout. That means the “middle-men” transaction fees can be substantially reduced, and the transaction speed increased, claims the startup.
In a statement, Ferdinand Dabitz, co-founder Ivy said: “In ten years, trillions of dollars worth of payments will be paid by bank, not by card – a major shift Ivy will drive. Currently, over 60 countries worldwide are rolling out instant payment systems enabling this.”
Ivy’s global API is currently available in Europe, the U.S., MENA and SEA regions.
Simon Schmincke, general partner at Creandum said: “Account-to-account payments are just getting started. What began with Open Banking in Europe has now become a global movement, with rails around the world becoming increasingly mature. Having looked at several legacy players as well as startups in this space, Ivy’s product was outperforming its peers significantly across all relevant metrics – conversion, adoption, success rates. We feel the team has found a winning proposition.”
The main competitors of Ivy are card schemes, such as Visa and Mastercard. However, Dabitz told me: “We think about A2A companies rather as peers on this shared mission towards driving volumes away from the card schemes.” Ivy also competes with startups like Volt or A2A solutions like Trustly.
Other investors in this round include 10xFounders, Jens Lapinski from Angel Invest, angels like Jeppe Rindom (founder/CEO Pleo), Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert and André Schwämmlein (Founders FlixBus), Oliver Merkel (Founder Flink), Christian Grobe and Matthias Knecht (founders Billie), Martin Blessing (Ex-CEO Commerzbank), and Nico Rosberg (F1 World Champion).
