The global payments market is worth $2 trillion and the European payments market is $400 billion. The Europe Pay by Bank market is estimated to be $40 billion and it is dominated by legacy incumbents. This is where UK fintech Banked has come up with a product that provides an alternative to the dominant legacy incumbents and put more control back into the hands of merchants in how they manage their business and engage their consumers.
It powers real-time payments for consumers, businesses and banks, thereby improving the customer experience, payment security, business efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. It makes a better way to accept and make payments.
$20M investment
Now, the provider of a new payment method that enables consumers to pay from their existing mobile banking app, has picked up $20 million in a Series A funding round. The investment round was led by Wall street-giant Bank of America and Edenred Capital Partners. Also, existing investors Acrew, Force Over Mass, Firestartr, OM2, Love Ventures (invested in UK-based Secret Spa), Kuvi Capital and Paul Forster, founder of Indeed.com participated in the round. Furthermore, the round involved participation from new investors including Sidekick, 9Yards and Huey Lin (ex-PayPal).
With this round, the total investment secured by the company is over $30 million. As the round involves participation from US-based investors supports the company’s plans for U.S. expansion.
Brad Goodall, Banked CEO said, “We have had a maniacal focus on infrastructure, security, and end-consumer experience. Our clients only need to focus on integration. We really want to work inside the existing ecosystem and are building out very strong partnerships to deliver innovative solutions globally. 2022 will see some really big brands go live with our products, driving at the heart of delivering innovation at the point of purchase to both the merchant and consumer”
Faiz Ahmad, Head Of Global Transaction Services, Bank Of America said, “We are pleased to be a lead investor for Banked and they have already demonstrated a proven ability to develop unique e-Commerce solutions. We look forward to seeing the benefits that this investment round will bring to Banked’s fast-growing client base.”
Global, digital payments network!
Founded by Brad Goodall, Neil Ambler, Ellie Fernandes, and Patrick Cox in 2018, Banked is building a global, digital payments network based on API access to super secure banking rails without the high-cost model to support it. The company’s goal is to deliver a fairer, faster, and highly secure payment network to merchants and consumers. It provides the tools to enable merchants to regain control of rewarding and incentivising their customers to drive loyalty and lifetime value.
The Banked product focuses on Pay by Bank for checkout, payment links to enable payments in physical and other non-checkout digital forms and provides instant refunds. Already, the fintech has chosen the Bank of America as their Pay by Bank partner. It has established partnerships with other fintech companies such as Primer, Apexx, Thought Machine, and Gr4vy as their Pay by Bank solutions. A lot more partnerships are to be announced in the future.
The competitors of Banked include Tink, Token and Truelayer as its product focuses on the ability to provide banking connections, and end-consumer experience to drive the best conversion for the merchant.
Also, Banked enables businesses to drive customer engagement and loyalty with incentives and rewards integrated into the payment experience. Currently, the company has an international team of over sixty employees across nine geographies, attracting talent from payment innovators such as PayPal, PayU, Klarna, Adyen, N26 and Checkout, bringing rich payments experience to the business.
What does it do?
Banked aims to become the leading provider of alternative card payment methods. Unlike other mainstream global payment methods, users do not need to create an account or pass any login information to Banked. They simply choose their existing bank at checkout and are securely connected to their mobile banking app to biometrically authenticate the purchase. Total checkout time for a first-time user is under 30 seconds and no financial details are shared with Banked, which boosts security.
For merchants, the cost is significantly lower and transactions take place in real-time and settle instantly. Notably, the fees are up to 90% lower than the traditional payment methods and fraud is virtually eliminated, thereby promoting lower prices for consumers.
