Just a few days after launching its next-generation payment-gateway, Pulse, Payworks announced a $4.5 million Series A. The round was led by HW Capital and Rumford, and featured the participation of “leading U.S. and European payment executives” as well as existing investor, Speedinvest. The funding will help accelerate the Munich, Germany-based company’s continued expansion into Europe and North America.

“We are extremely happy on having closed our Series A with a great group of investors,” said Christian Deger, Payworks CEO and co-founder. “With their support, we will make Pulse available to even more merchants worldwide and establish our position in the market as a leading payment-gateway technology company.”

Nikolaus von Taysen, a partner at Rumford, had high praise for the German SaaS payment-gateway company, and called Payworks “one of the very few companies that has a shot at replacing an old and outdated infrastructure on a global scale.”

CEO Christian Deger demonstrated the Payworks’ platform at FinvoateEurope 2014.

Payworks gives payment processors an alternative to the costly, inefficient, inflexible, and often poorly secured legacy systems still widely in use to process credit card payments. With Pulse, the company’s lightweight, next-generation, SaaS payment-processing platform, Payworks empowers smaller processors to keep up with the larger processors in the payment business. CEO and co-founder Christian Deger called the solution a “very important milestone for our company,” noting the technology provides fast, API-based, EMV, contactless card, mobile wallet, and chip and payment processing for both fixed and mobile point-of-sale systems.

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, and founded in 2012, Payworks demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2014. Winner of the MPE Award for most innovative payment startup, the company is active in more than 15 countries, and its payment provider clients serve hundreds of thousands of merchants in a number of different industries.