UK-based fintech startup Ryft announced a significant milestone with a £5.7 million Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to £7.4 million.
This infusion of capital, led by EdenBase and including participation from GPOS Investments, British Business Bank, Pembroke VCT, SidebySide, Ingenii VC, and strategic angel investors from PayPal, positions Ryft to challenge industry giants Stripe Connect and Adyen in the rapidly evolving payments landscape for digital marketplaces.
Let’s unpack what this means, why it matters, and where Ryft’s headed next.
Ryft’s latest haul brings its total funding to £7.4 million, counting the £1.2 million it scooped up back in a 2022 seed round.
Ryft’s got plans to polish up their platform, which helps marketplaces and digital platforms handle tricky payment splits, and take it global. They’re doubling staff, expanding into the EU and US, and adding features like omnichannel payments (think online and in-store in one go).
Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie are the co-founders who kicked off Ryft in 2019. Before Ryft, they built Butlr, a restaurant ordering app that got snapped up by OrderPay. While wrestling with payment systems for Butlr, they hit a wall: existing options were either too pricey or too clunky for the multi-party mess of marketplace transactions. So, they rolled up their sleeves and built Ryft from scratch.
Sadra, the CEO, put it this way: “Acquiring banks and most businesses were built for the one-to-one transactions of Commerce 1.0. But in Commerce 2.0, where a single marketplace deal involves tons of parties, financial institutions are scrambling to keep up.”
He’s talking about a shift from simple “I sell, you pay” setups to a world where a £100 sale might split between a seller, a platform, and a courier, all instantly. It’s a problem Ryft’s tackling head-on.Ryft’s platform is fully compliant with the EU’s PSD2 rules and the UK’s FCA regulations, meaning it’s legit and safe.
It hooks up with heavy hitters like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, and boasts a 99.9% uptime thanks to partnerships with multiple acquirers (the banks that process card payments). Over 1,500 businesses are already on board, and some say they’re saving up to 62% on fees compared to other providers.
Ryft lets acquiring banks and platforms customize how payments flow, split them however they want, hold funds in escrow if needed, and automate the whole shebang. It’s like giving banks a superpower to compete with Stripe and Adyen, who’ve long ruled the roost with their all-in-one (but pricey) solutions.
Ryft’s pitch: flexibility, compliance, and lower costs. No wonder they turned a profit in just two and a half years, pretty rare for a startup!
The digital payments world is booming. Research from Exploding Topics says global digital transactions hit $11.55 trillion in 2024 and are growing at nearly 10% a year. Marketplaces, think eBay, Uber, or Airbnb, are a huge chunk of that, and they’re only getting more complex.
Fortune Business Insights predicts the fintech market will balloon to $394.88 billion by the end of 2025. That’s a massive pie, and Ryft wants a slice. But it’s not just about money. Ryft’s timing is spot-on. The shift to what they call “Commerce 2.0” is real, businesses need tools to handle multi-party deals fast and cheap.
Traditional banks have been slow to adapt, leaving room for fintechs like Ryft to swoop in. Plus, with embedded finance (think payments baked right into platforms) set to hit $7.2 trillion by 2030 according to TechMagic, Ryft’s in the right place at the right time.
Stripe Connect and Adyen are the 800-pound gorillas here. Stripe processed $1 trillion in 2024, and Adyen handled €767 billion, per their own reports.
They’re slick, powerful, and everywhere, but they come with a catch: high fees and rigid setups that lock you in. Ryft’s betting that banks and platforms want more control and less cost.
It’s a bold move, and early signs, like tripling their gross merchandise value every year, suggest it’s working.
But it’s not all smooth sailing. Scaling globally means tackling different rules in every country, and Stripe and Adyen have a head start with their massive networks.
Still, Ryft’s bank-friendly approach could be a secret weapon, especially as open banking trends push traditional players to fight back against tech giants.
Sadra’s already hinting at “several strategic partnerships” to shake up the payments world. If they keep up their growth, tripling GMV again in the next 18 months, they could be a real thorn in the side of the big boys.
