Australian fintech Zepto raises $25M AUD Series A to enhance payment infrastructure

The $25 million Series A was co-led by AirTree and Decade Partners.

Merchants can use the instant payment platform to make, manage and receive secure payments.

The Series A funding came after a 10x year-over-year revenue growth. The company, which didn't provide a baseline for that growth and its valuation, says it facilitates more than $4 billion in payment volume every month and expects to process more than $50 billion in payments this year.

Australia's open-access infrastructure for fast payment is used by more than 100 Australian organizations. PayTo is a new digital tool for merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from customer bank accounts.

In October, Zepto became the first non-bank to be approved. The PayTo service, which is due to roll out in mid-2022, will allow Zepto to connect its clients directly.

Data-rich, real-time payments directly between bank accounts are the future of how we transact, and Australian policymakers have acknowledged this with the roll out of PayTo, which will replace direct debit in roughly 3-4 years.

There is an entire generation of consumers coming who will never own a credit card or get approval for a buy-now-pay-later product, but bank accounts are ubiquitous, and payments directly between them are a simple, clean and efficient way to pay for things.

The real-time payments through Australia'sNPP accounted for 31% of all account-to-account payments in October. He said that the total cumulative value of the payment was 2.6 billion.

Account-to-account is not a need for a card or pin, according to Jewell. A2A doesn't use Visa and Mastercard as the middleman for debit cards.

A2A payments will take up 20% of all e- commerce payments by 2020, according to the global payment report.

Hundreds of Australian corporations, including banks, trading platforms, third-party processors, proptech companies, travel and tourism operators, are served by Zepto. Novatti Group, Powerpay, Rentbetter, Biz Pay, and Get Blys are some of its customers.

The startup will use the latest funding to advance its functionalities on top of the PayTo framework and accelerate its international expansion, starting with New Zealand, driven by growing demand for Zepto's infrastructure in the region. After New Zealand, he wants to enter the U.S.

The global payments landscape is in the middle of its biggest upheaval in decades, as open banking and real-time, bank-to-bank payments are transforming how we pay and get paid. Australia has shown that it punches well above its weight in innovation with companies like Afterpay and Airwallex.