By
Steve Muchoki
February 9th, 2024
Rapyd, a London-based FinTech startup has got an extra $20 million in funding from Durable Capital Partners aiming to enable more customers to tap into a wide variety of financial services.
A growing trend in the financial technology world has been a continuous push towards consolidation where the bigger fish is acquiring the smaller fish. There is also an increasing number of interesting startups coming up. The acquisitions happen for the involved companies to enjoy enhanced economies of scale in a business model where all transactions bring incremental returns.
However, on December 3, a startup that built the concept of consolidation into its basic DNA raised another funding round. The funding enabled it to continue doubling down on its business. Rapyd, a London-based FinTech startup has got an extra $20 million in funding. That has brought its valuation to $1.2 billion.
The latest funding round comes from Durable Capital Partners. In October, Rapyd announced that it had closed a $100 million Series C funding round that was led primarily by Oak HC/FT partnering with Stripe, a previous investor. Other investors that participated in this funding round included Target Global, Tiger Global, Entree Capital, General Catalyst, and Coatue.
The startup has built an application programming interface (API) that enables customers to tap into a wide variety of financial services. Arik Shtilman, Rapyd’s CEO and Co-founder, said that the company aims to make some acquisitions. He noted:
“We’ve started to look at two acquisitions that were bigger than what we originally planned; with prices more in the range of $100 million.”
Although Rapyd has set up its technology from scratch, it now seeks to make acquisitions. The partnerships will enable it to get at a new business almost instantly.
The Future
The deals for the card-issuing platform partnering with a payments company operating in Asia-Pacific will close in February or March. Latin America and Asia-Pacific are two important regions for Rapyd. The company has signed on 20 more large-scale companies in the last three months. Most of these companies serve customers or based in the two regions.
Some of the common Rapyd’s customers include gig economy platforms, eCommerce merchants, technology providers, and financial institutions. The founder of Durable Capital Partners LP, Henry Ellenbogen, said that his company has the vision to focus and invest in promising early-stage growth companies. It also aims to invest in teams that have bold ideas.
However, Durable Capital can also execute at a world-class level and set up much bigger companies. Ellenbogen added:
“I believe the FinTech-as-a-Service category has tremendous potential, as companies seek to embed financial services as an integral part of the next-generation technology stack. I believe Rapyd is very well-positioned to lead and drive this trend, and I think Arik’s track record in scaling cloud-based businesses will deliver success in this sector.”
Developments
When the Rapyd executive was asked about whether the company is considering diving into logistics as one of its tools, he said that it was on the company’s roadmap. Currently, the company is in a pilot stage in Indonesia. The stage is an interesting testbed since the country is spread across thousands of islands.
Rapyd has already integrated a logistics service. It has also opened access to a single merchant as stage one of its closed beta. Additionally, it has entered into talks with other companies. The fintech firm is trying to convince them to incorporate their operations into the Rapyd platforms. It aims to offer more “logistics as a service” to customers. Rapyd said that Durable has helped by making an introduction to Convoy as a part of that bigger strategy.