Sequoia Capital has led a $35 million funding round for payments infrastructure specialist Finix. The investment, which also featured participation from Acrew Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Activant Capital, and Inspired Capital, takes Finix’s total funding to more than $55 million. The Series B will enable the company to further grow its product and engineering teams, as well as accelerate innovation in its payments-infrastructure-as-a-service offering.
Finix’s goal is to help companies “own their payment stack” which enables them to create the payment experience that best fits their customers and business. From enhancing the merchant onboarding experience to managing the flow of funds, Finix sees control over the payment process as a “strategic imperative” that companies should not relegate to third party payment service providers. In the same way that companies like Marqeta and Plaid have made it easier for businesses to issue cards and access financial information, Finix sees itself as empowering businesses to own payments.
“Every day, our customers prove to us they are able to build superior product experiences that delight both consumers and merchants when they have full control over their payment stacks,” Finix CEO Richie Serna said.
Finix also differentiates itself by the way it charges for its service. Instead of taking a cut from each transaction, Finix opts for a fixed pricing model plus a sliding scale fee based on the number of payments processed. Finix notes that companies can go live with its system in as few as two months and at a significant savings compared to building their own in-house solution.
“Historically, software companies have had two options: either take (the) pain and integrate payments into your software, or give it to your customers in the form of a disconnected experience,” Sequoia partner Pat Grady explained. Instead, he said, companies can use Finix’s “developer-friendly building blocks” to create an integrated, seamless payment experience for customers while adding payments as a new source of revenue.
Finix was founded in 2015 and is based in San Francisco, California. The company’s customers include Passport Labs, a mobility management platform, retail POS company Lightspeed POS, and small business financing and cash flow solution provider Kabbage.