Australia fintech start-up raises $19m Series A

The deal comes less than 12 months after the company spun out from Assembly Payments. Mx51 is led by Victor Zheng (pictured, left, with COO Magnus Hsu and Chief Product Officer Steve Hadley), formerly co-CEO of Assembly and before that an executive at Westpac.

The start-up announced a partnership with Westpac on launch and this has led to more than A$1 billion in transactions processed for merchants such as the Salvation Army and Carla Zampatti.

Mx51 describes itself as a bank-grade payments-as-a-service platform that enables banks and non-bank acquirers to provide multi-channel payments and value-added solutions to merchants. This enables them to compete with payments specialists such as Stripe, Tyro and Square.

Cumulative transaction volume is expected to surpass A$10 billion within the next 12 months as partnerships are closed with more major Australian financial institutions. Mx51 also wants to become the first true multi-channel payments platform that allows merchants to operate seamlessly in-store and online, according to a statement.

The Series A funding will go towards building out platform functionality and adding product, engineering, and operations professionals. Headcount is likely to grow by 30% this year.

“Mx51 is helping Australian banks and acquirers, who are the backbone of our financial services sector, compete with a myriad of nimble overseas competitors who are muscling in on the payments sector,” Zheng said. “We’re able to partner closely and quickly with major financial institutions as we designed the platform to be bank-grade from inception. The size of our first-ever round speaks for itself in terms of how bullish we are about rapidly rolling out our platform across Australia.”

The company joined Mastercard’s global fintech accelerator program last year. Kallan Hogan, vice president for fintech account management at Mastercard in Australasia, added: “Seeing a homegrown business like mx51 poised for rapid acceleration is a great moment for the local fintech community. It’s an example of the innovation Australia has on offer.”

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Early-stage
• Financials
• Technology
• Australia
• Fintech