Reach, a global e-commerce payments provider, which is headquartered in Calgary, Canada, has just secured $30 million in funding. The round was led by Vistara Growth alongside participation from Bluesky Equities, Tribune Capital, and Rising Tide. The investment comes at a time when the company bids to accelerate its mission of unlocking a global customer base for merchants through a streamlined payment, tax and fraud platform.
The proceeds of the round will be used to dramatically scale up Reach’s development teams, with a focus on merchant success and onboarding, as well as expansion into new shopper geographies to help grow local acquiring networks for both merchants and partners.
Sam Ranieri, CEO at Reach, commented: “Our pioneering solutions are helping companies to meet growing global customer demand through localised payment methods, optimised checkout conversions, and best-in-class fraud prevention services. We are proud of bootstrapping to significant scale and achieving a fourth consecutive year of 50% year-on-year growth. With demand accelerating, it was time to bring on experienced financial partners to help build on the foundations for our next phase of growth.”
Noah Shipman, Partner at Vistara Growth, commented: “Reach is a unique company that is loved equally by sales and marketing, international operations, IT and finance teams at its merchant and marketplace customers. It is rare to find a solution that materially improves customer experience and conversions, is easily integrated, and dramatically lowers the cost of delivery.”
Derrick Hunter, President at Bluesky Equities, added: “Sam is building a strong team with incredible momentum in the fast-growing global payment processing market. Reach is a market disruptor that is doing something new, and Bluesky is excited to invest in this round.”
What issue does Reach resolve?
E-commerce cross-border transactions are estimated to reach $1.2 trillion in 2022. Given this trend, localised shopping and payment experiences are indispensable when selling to an international customer base. Also, the consumer trust in foreign merchants has never been higher and more customers than ever are looking beyond their own localities for their ideal purchase.
Despite the increased demand, many merchants continue to see cross-border e-commerce as complicated and expensive and potential customers increasingly abandon carts as there is an inability to transact in their own local currency or when they are redirected to an unknown third-party checkout. Even if customers overcome these hassles, the transaction is rejected when foreign payment processors are not integrated with local payment methods.
Reach was founded in 2016 by Sam Ranieri to bring about a seamless checkout experience that provides customers with a localised payment experience. This leads to higher conversions and lower costs through the ability to dynamically transact in more than 120 local currencies with no currency risk and true local processing in more than 40 markets. Some popular localised payment processing companies include AliPay and MOLPay, among others.
Helps small and medium-sized businesses
Notably, e-commerce giants, such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify to name a few, have the resources to open operations in every new market to set up local processing, have large treasury teams dedicated to managing currency risk, and heavyweight legal teams to comply with every country’s regulations and tax structures. However, a vast majority of businesses do not have these, thereby creating a large competitive disadvantage.
This is where Reach comes to play as it helps small and medium-sized businesses to compete with the biggest industry names by offering higher checkout conversion rates, improved FX rates and leading fraud prevention services.
Reach’s model and platform are trusted by customers including innovative fashion brands Revolve and Everlane, jeweller James Allen, and high-growth digitally native consumer startups Current Body and BlendJet.
Agustin Farias, VP of International at Everlane, commented: “We’ve worked with Reach and the whole team has been an extension of our business. Time and time again, it has been a key partner in our international growth and we are excited to see it fulfil the ambitious plans for expansion into new markets that will only be a positive for its merchant partners across the globe.”
