Smartpay raises $7m in Pre-Series A funding round

By Gloria Mathias

Japanese-embedded FinTech Smartpay has secured $7 million in a pre-series A round from SMBC Venture Capital and Angel Bridge VC.

Smartpay has brought together Japanese, European, and American powerhouse investors who have deep experience in the FinTech industry. Smartpay is a digital embedded finance system in Japan to offers no interest, no late fees, and free-of-charge installments at the point of purchase.

It provides a checkout process with a credit card or direct from a bank account that takes less than 10 seconds and a hassle-free, fully automated instalment experience, so consumers no longer need to visit a convenience store for instalment payments or have cash ready for delivery. Consumers can also avoid the anxiety of sharing information with unfamiliar merchants.

Smartpay launched “Smartpay Bank Direct”  Japan’s digital financing service that allows customers to pay for online purchases straight from their bank accounts. This service has given Japanese consumers who prefer not to pay by credit card (which is 70% of purchases in Japan), a digital payment method that aligns with their needs and provides convenient digital financing and instalments.

Smartpay helps merchants by building a customer-focused checkout process, which provides them with higher conversion rates and lower cart abandonment rates on their eCommerce website.

For Japanese merchants, Smartpay takes all the fraud risk, which is critical as we transition to digital payments. It manages all fraud chargebacks, saving money, time, and resources for merchants. Smartpay’s integration process is fast, requiring only a day with its highest quality SDKs and APIs compared to the industry norm of two weeks. Apple Pay and Google Pay are automatically integrated into the Smartpay solution, saving merchants costly integration resources.

Recently, Smartpay has launched Japan’s first fully digital in-store payments with free automated instalments. Smartpay has developed new technology to enable merchants to set up Smartpay for in-store purchases with instalments in 30 seconds and without any integration cost.