Payment gateway Cashfree raises $5.5 Mn Series A round

Y Combinator-backed payment gateway company Cashfree has raised $5.5 million in Series A round led by South Korean venture capital firm Smilegate Investments.

The Silicon Valley-based accelerator and seed investor in Cashfree also participated in the round while George Osborne and Vellayan Subbiah invested in their personal capacity.

The Bengaluru-based startup founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta will use the funds for expanding the team from 45 to 100 and distribution of its API Banking platform Payouts.

Currently, Cashfree is used by more than 12,000 businesses for vendor payouts, wage payouts, bulk refunds, expense reimbursements, loyalty & rewards.

Cashfree runs four products that offer easy to integrate payment gateway that supports instant refunds, a split payment solution for marketplaces, a Bank Account Verification API and Auto Collect -- a virtual account solution to match inbound payments to customers.

Using Cashfree’s Payouts API, money can be moved even on bank holidays and to modes not supported otherwise by banks such as direct payment to a debit card, Paytm wallet, and UPI.

The startup is currently processing around $4.5 billion at an annualised run rate and it is growing 25 per cent month-on-month.

The four-year-old startup counts Xiaomi, Tencent, Delhivery, Zomato, Dunzo, Cred, Club Factory, ExxonMobil, donation platforms like Ketto and Milaap amongst its customers.

In India, payment gateway has been dominated by well-funded players like Payu Money, Instamojo, Infibeam, and Citrus.