Paysme, new FinTech platform for SMEs in UK & Ireland, launches £1m funding round

By Gaia Lamperti

Paysme, a new fintech platform for small businesses, today announced a £1 million funding round on the private capital platform Globacap to expand its B2B Super App, Europe’s first of its kind.

Paysme is a single platform delivering multiple services such as mobile payments, e-commerce, digital banking, accounting, lending and insurance via a Super App specifically designed to support the UK’s six million underserved SME companies.

Partnering with significant payment providers including Barclays, Railsbank, TOQIO, Bambora, and Cybersource, the firm is currently powering financial services for over 3,000 small businesses across 59 towns and cities in the UK and Ireland to accelerate their transition to the digital economy.

“These companies are the beating heart of our high streets and have been decimated by the pandemic – with almost 30% of all small businesses closing for good,” Derek Stewart, Paysme’s Founder and CEO, commented. “Our mission is to bring the high street and local communities back to life by giving them easy access to embedded digital financial services and reinvesting capital back into small independent operators through a customer ownership business model.”

Since its launch in 2018, the company generated £47 million cash flow to SMEs and with £1.6 million in total revenue to date, Paysme is poised to accelerate growth to profitability over the next 12 months by raising £1 million of equity funding. Proceeds of the Globacap fundraising will be used to continue enhancing the platform’s fintech services and technology as well as invest in a hiring programme in preparation for scaling.

The Super App approach powers multiple revenue streams with product features tailored to meet its customers’ needs, creating recurring revenues, high retention, low acquisition costs and granular customer data. With 74% of shareholders being its customers, the platform model is designed to put small business customers at the heart of its strategy.

“The Paysme platform hosts everything a small business needs to run its business in the digital economy in an integrated, easy, and cost-effective way with one point of personal contact from a team with a deep understanding of their industry.  It eliminates the need to use a multitude of different unconnected suppliers for mobile payments, e-commerce, digital banking and administrative tools saving SMEs time, money and stress, and solving sector fragmentation and relationship marketing,” Stewart explained.

The company‘s suite of financial products is personalised for specific industry channels across a range of traditional enterprises whose potential is still untapped due to insufficient digital infrastructures. They represent a marketplace of almost six million businesses in the UK and Ireland with a value of £111 billion, and a further 25 million small businesses across Europe.

Among Paysme customer figure Cab:app, a network of 11,500 drivers for black cabs and licensed taxis, community engagement app Fanslive for sports clubs and Marketti the platform connecting market traders. In December last year, the UK-based fintech closed an equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs with almost £300,000 from 165 investors.