Australian fintech startup Zepto, which creates real-time, account-to-account merchant payment solutions, has announced to have raised AUD $25 million ($18.8 million) in a Series A funding round.
The investment round was co-led by AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners. Previously, AirTree Ventures has invested in a slew of Australian tech success stories including Canva, Linktree, Mr Yum, Brighte, Who Gives a Crap and Employment Hero, among others.
Zepto will use the investment to fuel the next wave of innovation by transforming the payments landscape, accelerating the growth of its headcount and driving its international expansion. Initially, it intends to start with New Zealand, where there is a growing demand for its infrastructure and wants to foray into the US.
The Series A funding comes after it witnessed a massive 10x year-over-year revenue growth since its debut in 2018. As per the company, it has facilitated over $4 billion in payment volume every month and expects to process over $50 billion in payments in 2022.
Describing the investment, Zepto CEO Chris Jewell said, “We are excited to partner with AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners on our first external funding round. From our roots as a bootstrapped Byron Bay upstart, Zepto has grown to become a market leader in the payments industry. We intend to use this capital to grow our team and technology in a meaningful, empowering way as we meet the demands of an ever-evolving domestic market, as well as accelerate our expansion into international markets,”
James Cameron, Partner at AirTree Ventures, noted: “The global payments landscape is in the middle of its biggest upheaval in decades, as open banking and real-time, bank-to-bank payments are transforming how we pay and get paid. With open banking and the NPP, Australia has found itself at the centre of this disruption – and Zepto is the leading innovator in this space. We believe Chris and the Zepto team are part of the next generation of fintech pioneers.”
Tom Hordern, co-founder at Decade Partners, who said: Merchants are choosing Zepto because it’s fast, secure and most importantly developer first and led. These attributes are key to Zepto’s success, and Decade Partners believe this can be traced back to Zepto’s exceptional team and culture
Whom does Zepto serve?
Zepto was founded by Trevor Wistaff, Matthew Cheers, Adrian Kennedy and Ian Lennie in 2018 in Byron Bay. It wants to cater to the generation of consumers who do not have a credit card or those who will not get approval for a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) product. The fintech understands that direct bank accounts payments are a simple, clean and efficient way to pay for things.
As per reports, the real-time payments through Australia’s NPP (new payment platform) accounted for 31% of all account-to-account (A2A) payments in 2021. Also, the total cumulative value of NPP payments was 2.6 billion since its debut in 2017.
It is estimated that the A2A payments that are made from bank to bank will account for 20% of all e-commerce payments in 2023, thereby surpassing the card payments. Notably, these transactions do not need a card or PIN and cut off the intermediary involved in card payments powered by Visa and Mastercard.
Being an innovator in this space, Zepto serves hundreds of Australian corporations, including lenders, trading/crypto platforms, third-party processors, proptech companies, travel and tourism operators. Some of its customers are Binance Australia, Superhero, Novatti Group, Nimble, Powerpay, Till Payments, Bluestone, Rentbetter, Biz Pay and Get Blys.
