Traditional payment systems for marketplaces with multiple sub-merchants often involve lengthy processes, wasted time, and reliance on multiple platforms. Ryft consolidates these into a single, efficient platform that automates payments, simplifies merchant onboarding, and ensures next-day payouts to merchants and sub-merchants
Today, UK fintech startup Ryft has raised £5.7 million in Series A funding, aiming to transform the infrastructure behind marketplace and digital platform payments. The raise brings Ryft’s total funding to £7.4 million and positions the company to become a serious contender in a space long dominated by Stripe Connect and Adyen. In 2022, the startup secured £1.2 million in a seed funding round.
The investment round was led by EdenBase and included participation from GPOS Investments, British Business Bank, Pembroke VCT, SidebySide, and Ingenii VC. Notably, strategic angel investors such as PayPal executives also joined the round. Early investor SFC Capital realised a partial exit during this round, returning 6.2x for its backers, a rare early-stage outcome that underlines the company’s strong performance.
With this latest funding, Ryft plans to build on its momentum by expanding its modular product suite and scaling internationally. The company will invest in refining its platform, which enables acquiring banks to process complex payment flows automatically, split transactions between parties in real-time, and offer features such as conditional payouts. These capabilities are essential for marketplaces and digital platforms that manage multi-party transactions, revenue shares, and seller commissions.
Bringing flexible payment flows for marketplace transactions
Ryft was founded by Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie in 2019. It was born out of a challenge the co-founders experienced firsthand. While building their previous business restaurant ordering app Butlr, which was acquired by OrderPay, they encountered major roadblocks when trying to implement compliant, flexible payment flows for marketplace transactions. They found that existing solutions were either prohibitively expensive or simply not built for the complexity of platform commerce.
Recognising this gap, they launched Ryft to provide a decentralised, fully PSD2- and FCA-compliant payment platform tailored for marketplaces and platforms. Since launching, Ryft has achieved regulatory approval, partnered with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, and integrated with multiple acquirers to ensure high availability, delivering 99.9% uptime.
Ryft core: a compliant payment system
The company aims to streamline all of these processes in a singular efficient platform, reducing the associated risks for marketplaces and their onboarding processes. In addition, the solution is completely PSD2 compliant. The company’s solution handles everything from accepting online payments, verifying and onboarding merchants, to splitting up the payments however a business wants. All these are done through easy-to-use API documentation to remove complexity and fast-track the development cycle.
Ryft’s technology eliminates the need for costly third-party platforms or time-intensive in-house builds. It has already been adopted by over 1,500 businesses, and many report significant cost reductions, some saving up to 62% in payment processing fees compared to other providers.
In just two and a half years, Ryft has become profitable and tripled its gross merchandise value (GMV) annually. The team is planning to repeat that performance over the next 18 months while scaling headcount and deepening product capabilities. With offices in Manchester and London, Ryft is now eyeing global expansion as demand for customisable, cost-effective payment orchestration continues to rise.
Going head-to-head with Stripe Connect and Adyen
At its core, Ryft is offering acquiring banks and platforms the flexibility and control that Stripe Connect and Adyen currently dominate but without the high costs or lock-in complexity. While Stripe and Adyen offer powerful solutions, they often bundle features with steep pricing and require platforms to fit into rigid frameworks.
Ryft’s pitch is radically different. It enables banks to own the relationship with their merchants, process custom transaction flows, and offer delayed payouts via a licensed escrow feature all while achieving greater margins and lower infrastructure costs. In short, Ryft gives acquiring banks the tools to compete directly with Stripe Connect and Adyen, not just integrate with them.
As digital commerce platforms become more complex and global, Ryft is betting that payment flexibility, compliance, and cost-efficiency will be the defining advantages. With this funding round secured, it’s gearing up to redefine who holds the power in the $20 trillion acquiring ecosystem.
Sadra Hosseini, CEO and Co-founder of Ryft, said: “Acquiring banks and most businesses were built for the one-to-one transactions of Commerce 1.0. However, in the era of Commerce 2.0, where transactions within a single marketplace involve numerous parties, financial institutions are struggling to deliver payment operations that meet the evolving needs of their customers. As a result, they’re unable to compete with the likes of Stripe Connect and Adyen whose solutions currently dominate the payments ecosystem despite high fees, complicated integrations, poor support, and prolonged payment wait times. At Ryft, we have the technology that allows acquiring banks to overcome these hurdles and we’re actively exploring several strategic partnerships to solve this issue in the payments industry.”
Rasmus Ny Sejer, Compliance Officer and MLRO at leading acquirer Clearhaus, commented: “Ryft is a valued partner with a commitment to compliance, collaboration and outstanding technical support that enables our marketplace merchants to be successful. This has created a strong foundation for our mutual long-term growth.”
Investors’ views
Eric Van der Kleij, General Partner at EdenBase, said: “Sadra and Alex are tried and tested entrepreneurs with first-hand experience of the headaches that finding a payment partner brings. As a result, they have created a unique solution that allows business owners to focus on growth, secure in the knowledge that their payments are being handled in a compliant, quick and cost-effective way. The renewed focus on growing the acquirer side of the business demonstrates their commitment to promoting efficiency and transparency in the marketplace and platform payments space, aligning with the modern demands of Commerce 2.0.”
Fred Ursell, Investment Director at Pembroke VCT, said: “We backed Ryft because we saw a team with deep payments expertise, the ambition to challenge incumbents, and the execution to make it happen. Their rapid growth, capital efficiency, and ability to turn payments from a cost centre into a profit driver stood out. With a modern platform and strong regulatory positioning in an industry with attractive, long-term fundamental growth drivers, Ryft is well-positioned to scale. We’re excited to support Sadra, Alex, Richard, and the team on their journey.”
Jason Druker, Chief Commercial Officer at SFC Capital, said: “Ryft is solving a critical challenge in the payments space with a highly scalable solution. We continue to be impressed by the team’s execution and vision, and we’re excited to keep supporting them as they scale. This round marks another step in their journey, and we look forward to seeing their impact grow.”
