Indian fintech Juspay raises $21m Series B
Juspay, a developer of mobile payment solutions for online businesses, has raised $21.6 million in a Series B round led by Vostok Emerging Finance, a Swedish investment firm.
Other investors in the round include Wellington Management and Accel Partners. Previously, Accel led a INR400 million ($5.8 million) Series A round in 2016. Vostok is an investor in financial services companies seeking growth-stage capital. Listed on the Nasdaq First North exchange in Sweden, it has invested in 13 financial technology start-ups, primarily in Brazil and Mexico.
Established in 2012, Juspay offers two products – Safe, a secure in-app browser to safeguard payments made within banking and e-commerce apps, and Express Checkout, a payment gateway solution for merchants that connects the user with various payment options. It is also the developer of BHIM, the official payment app promoted by the Indian government.
The company claims to process more than 3.5 million transactions a day, up from 1.8 million a day last year. It is used by the likes of Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Swiggy, Ola and Cred, and integrates with payment apps such as Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm.
Juspay plans to use the fresh capital to further develop its product offerings in India and expand outside the country. It anticipates an increase in the usage of online methods of payments in the country.
“The public payment infrastructure in India is unlike any we have encountered globally and is fast becoming a benchmark for other emerging countries. We see huge growth potential in the business driven by the first principle innovation that is part of Juspay’s DNA and the general digitization of the Indian economy,” said Alexis Koumoudos, a partner at Vostok Emerging Finance, in a statement.
Other solution providers helping improve payment gateways in the country include RazorPay, PayU, Instamojo, CC Avenue and Paytm. These intermediaries usually earn revenue by charging installation, transaction and maintenance fees to merchants. Paytm, which entered the payment gateway business later than the rest in 2018, claims it processes over 400 million transactions every month.
Vostok’s portfolio in Asia includes only one other fintech start-up - Finja, a mobile wallet provider in Pakistan. It is one of many specialist investment firms seeking to invest in the space globally. Last month, Quona, a US and India-headquartered investor, raised its second fund with a corpus of $203 million.
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