Recko, an Indian startup that enables AI-powered reconciliation of digital transactions, has raised $1 million seed funding from Prime Venture Partners.
With digital transactions in India surging, the startup claims to have hit upon a key market need - an independent third party reconciliation layer to ensure timely settlements among various interacting parties, eliminating time-consuming manual processes.
The Recko reconciliation layer promises to ensure that the businesses are receiving settlements in accordance with the agreed rate cards, payout cycles, and are able to track and report payment realisation, refunds and chargebacks.
Coming out of stealth, Recko says it has already reconciled transactions worth $2 billion and is looking to scale this by ten times in the next year.
Saurya Prakash Sinha, CEO, Recko, says: "We see the current settlements and reconciliation process as a massive inefficiency in the payment lifecycle across industries such as Banking, Lending, Insurance, Telecom, E-Commerce etc.
"We are humbled by the initial market response and are all geared up to scale 10x our current volumes by the end of this financial year."
TransferGo, one of the world’s fastest growing money transfer companies, today announced that it has launched an ‘extended hours’ service, enabling customers to make same-day international payments on weekends, with transactions taking as little as 30 minutes.
Both its Today and Now services will become available during the weekend, between 10:00 and 18:00.
An industry first, the extended hours service will enable people to send money to Romania, Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia upon launch, and it will soon open up to other markets including the UK and Poland.
TransferGo is favored by migrants working in the UK and sending money home to their families that don’t want to deal with the bureaucracy and fees imposed by banks for processing payments in other countries and currencies.
Daumantas Dvilinskas, CEO and Co-Founder, TransferGo commented: “We pride ourselves on offering a service that makes life easier, and more comfortable, for our customers and we’re always looking for ways to reduce the stress, anxiety and friction that waiting for money to arrive can bring. We were seeing an increase in the number of transactions being made over weekends – so the next logical step was to launch an extended hours service.”
In May, TransferGo announced that it had surpassed one million customers and continues to grow by more than 2,000 new users each day. The service is currently accessible in 47 countries.
Based in London, UK, TransferGo is the quickest, most reliable remittance company in Europe and with a Trustpilot score of 9.6 and an NPS score of 75, it has built a much-loved brand based on transparency, trust and user experience. Last year the company announced a fee-free offer – the first completely free international money transfer service.
fire.com has today announced that it has been authorised as an e-money institution in the UK to provide a range of payment services, changing the way businesses pay and get paid.
In the last few years, fire.com has focused on the business and corporate market, which has seen its number of customers grow to approx. 3,000. Colm Lyon, CEO & Founder of fire.com said “Since the firm has a significant customer base in the UK, along with our business development offices being in Shoreditch, London, we needed to ensure that we could not just continue to scale, but also continue to be a leading player in the open banking ecosystem in all the regions relevant to us.”
In addition, Lyon added that “Over the last two years we have seen real change in the way businesses wish to pay and get paid. Today it’s all about the integrated experience and allowing businesses to create accounts and issue cards via APIs, to enable businesses to process large volumes of incoming or outgoing payments in an automated and fully integrated fashion. So, our API has become almost more relevant than the payment itself, as it provides real time, instant and fully reconcilable data.” Case studies on the fire.com website, include profiles of Grid Finance - a business finance specialist, Accelerated Payments - an invoice financing business and Buymie - an on-demand grocery delivery platform.
Looking to the future, Lyon doesn’t see Brexit getting in the way, “on the contrary, we are now extremely well positioned to help any business or corporate client that needs to pay and get paid in an integrated way and in a post-Brexit world. And with open banking getting closer and closer we see huge benefits coming down the line and our role is to help businesses execute on these changes.”
Billtrust, the leader in B2B order-to-cash solutions, announced today that Priority Commercial Payments ("Priority") has joined Billtrust's Business Payments Network (BPN) to provide merchants the technology and support to streamline reconciliation of commercial payments captured through the BPN platform.
With this new strategic partnership, Priority -- which processes more than $45 billion on behalf of over 190,000 merchants annually -- further expands BPN's ability to serve merchants that wish to receive touchless electronic payments remitted through accounts payable (A/P) platforms. Merchants receiving payments through BPN via Priority will reduce costs and gain efficiencies by receiving automated payments that post straight through to their preferred ERP or accounting system.
"We've long admired Priority for the work they've done to enable merchants to benefit from the acceptance of new forms of payment, such as virtual card," said Nick Babinsky, Vice President & General Manager, Business Payments Network at Billtrust. "As like-minded FinTechs focused on converting paper check to digital forms of commerce, we are well-positioned to drive even greater value to merchants and banks as partners through BPN."
"As one of the fastest growing payments companies in the U.S., we are continuously innovating best-in-class solutions that meet the unique and evolving needs of businesses," said Cindy O'Neill, President, Priority Commercial Payments. "We are excited to partner with an industry leader like Billtrust, to offer new tools to the BPN customer base, further enabling seamless acceptance of digital payments for all merchants."
Launched late last year, BPN streamlines the delivery of electronic B2B payments to businesses in ways not possible until now by:
Providing financial institutions and A/P platforms with the ability to deliver digital payments directly to merchants participating in the network Offering acquirers and accounts receivable (A/R) providers the opportunity to capture transaction volume through the network on behalf of merchants Enabling complex financial and payment data to seamlessly come together at scale while delivering streamlined reconciliation to suppliers and buyersThe strategic partnership with Priority further demonstrates Billtrust's leadership amongst major players across the B2B payments ecosystem helping to bridge the gap between A/P and A/R with BPN.
Silicon Valley Bank, the bank of the world’s most innovative companies and their investors, and First Data (NYSE: FDC), a global leader in commerce-enabling technology, have selected five startups to participate in Class 9 of Commerce.Innovated., an accelerator program designed to help commerce, payments, and fintech companies grow their businesses.
The four-month program provides participants with operational mentorship from Silicon Valley Bank, First Data, and their respective networks. Silicon Valley Bank also welcomed a new head of the program, Armand Patella, founder of Nowsta and a former Commerce.Innovated. graduate.
Commerce.Innovated. launched in 2014, and has worked with 37 commerce, payments, and fintech-focused startups including Alloy, Candex, Domuso, Earny, FutureFuel, QuadPay, Qwil, and Splitwise. Since graduating from the program, more than half of participating companies have raised funding or been acquired.
The five companies selected to participate in the current class provide a variety of solutions for businesses and consumers:
• BridgeCare: AI-powered employee benefits for childcare and education, based in San Jose, California
• FanAI: Audience monetization platform for esports, sports & entertainment, based in Santa Monica, California
• Flow Commerce: A technology platform that simplifies the management of cross-border e-commerce, based in Hoboken New Jersey
• Mudflap: Next-gen payments platform for the trucking industry, based in Palo Alto, California
• Unit21: Detection and investigations platform for anti-money laundering, based in San Francisco, California
“I’m thrilled to join the Silicon Valley Bank team and be a part of Commerce.Innovated.,” said Armand Patella, Head of Commerce.Innovated. at Silicon Valley Bank. “Commerce.Innovated. was extremely helpful for my startup and our payments strategy. It’s a privilege to be in a position to support the growth of other founders, advise on the challenges they face, and provide them with resources to succeed. The companies in the current class are creating solutions that will make a positive impact for multiple industries including HR, esports, ecommerce, trucking and financial services.”
“First Data welcomes the new class of startups, aspiring entrepreneurs, and growing businesses to Commerce.Innovated.,” said Chris Foskett, Head of Corporate and Business Development, and Co-Head of Global Financial Solutions at First Data. “Startups are synonymous with creativity and innovation, and our Class 9 participants have the opportunity to leverage Commerce.Innovated.’s world-class resources to build innovative solutions that bring simplicity and automation to our industry.”
Commerce.Innovated. welcomes new applicants semi-annually and will accept applications for the next class starting later this year.