Even as cross-border and international payments continue to evolve across the globe, many existing international payments solutions often require businesses to source, negotiate and maintain a minimum of ten to 15 partners, contracts and APIs.
Paytrix is a UK-based fintech payments firm that provides a payment curation solution to help reduce inefficiencies, cost and complexity of international payments. To simplify international payments for businesses, it does so through one platform, contract and API.
To learn more about the company, its evolution and future plans, The Fintech Times sat down with Eddie Harrison, co-founder and CPO at Paytrix.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
Paytrix helps ambitious businesses to trade globally by simplifying international payments for them. We’re freeing companies from headaches in terms of unnecessary costs and complex frameworks, with a simplified offering that also speeds settlements.
Every fast-growth business finds opportunities outside its home market. Being able to capitalise on these opportunities, however, often isn’t as easy as it sounds. E-commerce is already a significant sector of the global economy, and industry growth is predicted to continue at a rate of 12 per cent through 2027, so, there’s a huge market and customer opportunity.
However, from what we’ve seen, businesses usually have to work with numerous partners to facilitate their global payments due to regional, product or currency constraints.
This is where we come in. We are developing the world’s first curation layer as a bridge to a full payments stack in markets across the world. No matter where or when, we can help businesses better integrate payment innovation and meet the needs of their customers.
What problem does your company aim to solve?
We saw a need to simplify payments, especially for companies that want to do business internationally. Too often those types of businesses operate via a payments infrastructure that is holding them back. This is because today, most payment systems rely on a lot of intermediaries and differing regulations to move money from country A to B for transaction settlements in the currencies that their customers want to use.
This drives up costs and adds friction. We’re championing a better way.
Instead of the need to maintain somewhere between 10-15 partners, contracts, and APIs globally, we’ve come up with a curation solution. Our ‘curation layer’ means international payments connect directly to local rails with a single contract through a single API, and we take care of everything else behind the scenes. Businesses only need to pay and manage one supplier to unlock access to a full payment stack of payment acceptance, settlement accounts, and payouts, across all borders.
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
Our company was founded by experienced fintech operators with the mission to make international scaling simple. Since our start last year, our team has grown from 2 to 100 people across the UK and Europe, and earlier this year we raised US$ 18.3 million in Series-A funding to drive product development and international expansion.
Right now we’re in the process of developing the world’s first payment curation layer that absorbs risk, deals with multi-territory regulation, provides infrastructure buildout, and eliminates so much of the complexity that comes with managing payments in-house.
To achieve that we’re well on the way to gold-standard licensing and compliance. Earlier this year, we obtained the Payments Institution License in the UK to enable UK businesses to scale globally with foreign exchange, remittance and payment services. Plus, we’re in the process of acquiring our EU licence to provide further scalability.
What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?
We had a debt facility with Silicon Valley Bank UK (SVB UK), and so were very pleased when HSBC stepped in to bring the bank into its portfolio. More than anything, we were pleased for the SVB UK team who’ve been great partners to work with and whose communications are always excellent. Fortunately, we were lucky to have such a great team at HSBC, and all parties were very happy with the way the SVB UK situation was resolved.
What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?
Difficult to choose one! First, we’re extremely proud to have raised $18.3million in our series A round. This shows that our investors believe in our game-changing service as much as we do and that there’s a gap in the market that we can fill.
And then there’s that thrill of bringing the first customers on to Paytrix. Our roster of customers is growing rapidly and includes Fyorin (a business banking platform), Cardstream (a payment gateway in Europe), a European ticketing marketplace, and a global ’employer of record’ platform (for managing and working with employees in international markets).
How would you describe the culture of your company?
Ambitious and driven but with a high dose of humility too – international payments is a complex business and it’s important to understand the scope of this. We want people who love working in teams to tackle complicated challenges.
Every single one of us brings something new to the table, and we encourage everyone who shares our passion for payments to get in touch. We’re constantly looking for best-in-class talent who can help us shape the future of payments, a mindset all of us share.
What’s in store for the future?
At the moment, we’re focusing on payouts and we currently process 133 currencies in over 200 countries, including real-time FX.
We will be able to handle incoming payments, no matter what acquirers our customers already use, whether that involves open banking or other providers. We want to enable global collections which will allow merchants to collect funds in each of the markets they operate in. Other payment options will follow, such as direct to card, and virtual card issuance. Moving forward, we will introduce new solutions, soon covering all payment options needed.
