APEXX, a new single marketplace for global payments, today announced the closing of its initial seed funding round and a grant by Innovate UK, which totals to $4 million for the London-based fintech company. The round was led by Forward Partners, a London-based VC which specialises in applied artificial intelligence, and was joined by MMC Ventures and Alliance Venture.
Founded in 2016, the global APEXX network is made up of payment service providers and banks which helps merchants to reduce the cost of cross border payment acceptance, increase sales with optimised payment transaction routing and manage multiple provider relationships through a single integration point. Using the cloud-based platform, merchants can compare costs and get expert advice on the payment providers that will best suit them. It can save merchants upwards of 15% on the cost of processing credit or debit card payments and alternative payments.
In July, Valerie Soranno Keating, ex- CEO of Barclaycard, joined APEXX’s board as Non-Executive Director. Since the launch in April 2017, the Fintech platform has seen exciting growth and also received industry recognition in November, when they won Most Disruptive Payments Technology in the 2017 Payments Awards.
APEXX will use the investment to further extend their global network of acquirers, payment providers and merchants, and fund product development.
Matthew Bradley, investor at Forward Partners commented: “The unique acquirer-agnostic platform and algorithmic payment routing of APEXX rebalances existing payment relationships in favour of the customer. It’s a bold mission and I’ve never seen a company at this stage be so far entrenched in multiple global enterprises. The business fits squarely within Forward Partners’ Applied AI investment thesis and we’re excited to be investing alongside MMC and Alliance Ventures.”
Peter Keenan, Co Founder and CEO at APEXX said “We’re thrilled to see APEXX moving from strength to strength. We’ve already launched the first single marketplace for global payments in the world, we have an experienced leadership team steering the company and a strong vision bringing transparency, efficiency and competition to the payments market. Investment from these leading VC’s will bring the expertise and funding needed to help us accelerate the growth of the business.”
