Kadmos raised €29m in a Series A funding round led by Blossom Capital

By Joy Dumasia

Kadmos, the end-to-end salary payments platform for cross-border employers, has raised €29m in a Series A funding round led by Blossom Capital. The investment round, which follows an €8.3m Seed round in December, also included existing investors Addition and Atlantic Labs.

Kadmos is already working with several high-profile shipping companies and has built a robust waitlist ahead of full-scale customer onboarding this summer. This new financing will be used for technology and product development. Kadmos is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the growing global cross-border B2C payment volume projected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2022, involving 169 million migrant workers worldwide.

Kadmos was founded to tackle the severe restrictions placed on the financial freedom of cross-border employees and to use modern financial technology to allow migrant workers to have a streamlined salary experience, just as they would expect to work in their home country. The traditional financial system presents employers with unnecessary complexity when paying salaries across the globe and often requires employers to pay large fees to transfer salary payments.

Kadmos has developed a secure salary payments platform for shipping companies that enables them to pay their crews efficiently. Kadmos provides seamless integration with the Kadmos web application, where companies can automatically add their employees through an API connection to various crewing software. 

Kadmos provides each employee with access to the mobile app, where salary payments are instantly paid and which allows employees to transfer money home or use a debit card to spend or withdraw cash seamlessly. Digitalizing the payment process means the funds can be kept in secure currencies within the Kadmos app, ensuring low transaction fees and market-leading foreign exchange rates. 

Justus Schmueser, Kadmos Co-Founder, said: “The financial restrictions placed on migrant workers are truly shocking. Employees need to wait days or weeks for their hard-earned salaries to reach their families and are then forced into paying exorbitant transaction fees or have to carry large sums of cash at their own risk. At Kadmos, we are working to change the status quo through cutting-edge financial technology and ensuring the hard-working people who power the global economy can keep more of their well-deserved salaries. The speed and size of our latest funding round underline the potential for our platform, and we’re honoured to partner with such a reputable and prestigious venture fund in Blossom.”

Sasha Makarovych, Kadmos Co-Founder, said: “At Kadmos, our mission is simple, to make being paid internationally as easy as being paid domestically. In an ever-globalized world, it’s criminal that it is so difficult for cross-border employers and their employees to pay and be paid. We’ve been taken aback by the level of demand for our product, particularly as geopolitical crises continue to cause issues around cross-border payments. To have Blossom’s support will mean that we can continue to rapidly expand our team and the product.”

Alex Lim, Managing Partner of Blossom Capital, said:“From the moment we met Justus and Sasha, we couldn’t help but be drawn to their scale of ambition and drive. With outdated banking practices and multiple intermediaries that charge excessive fees, it’s clear that the process for cross-border payments is broken, and Kadmos’ fintech platform is exactly the technology to fix it. 2022 looks set to be an exciting year for the team as they look to grow the product into new verticals, and we’re delighted to be joining them on this journey.”