Tapaya has raised €1 million in pre-seed funding, led by Passion Capital, with Depo Ventures as co-lead and additional investment from BADideas.fund.
This Prague payments infrastructure startup emerged in July 2025 after its founders became frustrated with old-fashioned payment terminals. Laura Ďorďová, Roman Kuchařík, and Petr Zahradník first worked with traditional point-of-sale, or POS, hardware at festivals and big events, where sellers lack quick and reliable payment options.
“Most people think of software terminals as something you use on a phone, but we see a much bigger opportunity. It’s about bringing software terminals to Android devices, kiosks, tablets, and more,” says Laura Ďorďová, CEO and co-founder of Tapaya, to Tech Funding News.
Tapaya’s platform brings together compliance, processor integrations, and card scheme connections into a single software development kit, also known as SDK. This allows developers to add in-person payment options to Android, iOS, tablets, kiosks, and enterprise systems in days.
“Most commerce has moved to software, but payments are still stuck with hardware. Tapaya solves this by offering everything in one SDK, so developers can add payments as easily as any other feature,” Ďorďová adds.
Tapaya’s main competitors are established SoftPOS providers like Visa’s Tap to Phone, Mastercard’s Tap on Phone, and Discover Global Network’s SoftPOS solution. With these options, companies must manage processor relationships and certification themselves. Tapaya’s platform connects to multiple processors, banks, and card schemes simultaneously and manages all compliance in one place.
“We’re interested in Tapaya because they have strong technical skills and are solving a real gap in the market. The team has already handled the toughest parts of payments certification, so they know what they’re making easier for customers. In-person payments are six times bigger than online, but the tools for software builders haven’t kept up,” says Will Orde, partner at Passion Capital.
The company is starting with physical, in-store payments, which are the most complex. “We might move into online payments in the future, but for now, we’re focusing on the hardest part, which is physical payments,” concludes Ďorďová.
The funding will help Tapaya get certified under the PCI MPoC security standard and build its own payments infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe. The company is also preparing its platform for agentic payments, AI-driven physical transactions, and the digital euro.
