We are delighted to announce our investment in and partnership with Gr4vy, a cloud-native payments orchestration platform (POP) that enables merchants across the globe to accept payments in a way that works for them. Having invested in their $1.1m seed round at the end of 2020 alongside our friends at Global Founders Capital and Activant, we’re thrilled to see the company come out of stealth alongside a $11.1m Series A led by Nyca Partners.

The payments challenge for growing businesses

When we first met the Gr4vy team, they told us about a problem our own portfolio companies had experienced countless times. When merchants start out, they typically begin with one payment processor - usually prioritising price and user experience for their primary market. This works well initially but as they scale internationally, their existing processor often cannot support them globally (e.g. Stripe is active in just 42 countries, with 31 of those in Europe) or, even if they do, they are not the best choice when using those very same criteria. This results in the business needing to establish multiple relationships to manage their payments globally and they are essentially forced to build out a payments team who subsequently build an internal orchestration platform to route payments where they need to go. This is complex and expensive. Each region has its own subtleties in regards to customer preferences, regulations and infrastructure. For many merchants, this is not a core capability and hiring experts in both payments and cloud engineering is challenging. Both their attention and resources would be better used focusing on core growth levers rather than building out and managing a global payments infrastructure from scratch.

Too many ‘Pipes’, not enough ‘valves’

In the last 10-20 years, we’ve seen remarkable progress in the accessibility of global payments. There are now 900+ major payment gateways worldwide that provide the ‘pipes’ that bring quick, compliant, and (mostly) low-cost transactions. However, what we haven’t seen is the same level of growth in the ‘valves’ - there are no more than 10 payment orchestration platforms that can help merchants navigate the landscape, choose the right PSPs, manage the routing of payments, and ensure local data compliance.

With the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerating the acceptance of digital payments, the value proposition of these ‘valves’ has become refined. POPs can help merchants lower their payment costs, reduce the need for a large and expensive payments team, and make it easier to expand into new markets. We’re confident that having a flexible payment infrastructure is going to be crucial for companies to adapt and scale in the new post-pandemic environment.

The role of Gr4vy in global payments

Gr4vy is uniquely positioned to bring in this new flexible payment future and unlock global commerce for merchants both large and small.

Their API-led cloud platform enables businesses to manage and control their payments stack globally. This includes mix-and-matching providers, payment methods, and routing transactions without being locked into one single ecosystem. By being the only cloud-native POP, Gr4vy brings retailers unparalleled flexibility with individualized infrastructure, no slowdowns from sharing server loads with other merchants, and no single point of failure. Retailers can deploy across the globe and even on the Edge to ensure their customers always have the payment solutions and options they need regardless of location.

Meanwhile, Gr4vy’s no-code platform enables you to do all of this without any complex coding or having to build out an extensive payments team.

All-Star Team

Beyond the product, a real clincher for us was Gr4vy’s founder-market fit. All three founders - John, Ali, and Cristiano - met at payments giant Paypal where they witnessed the trials and tribulations involved in scaling merchants globally. Together, they have a comprehensive set of skills, experience, and network that will be paramount to achieving Gr4vy’s mission. We’re incredibly confident in the team’s ability to leverage their backgrounds in payments, developer communities, and company-building to put Gr4vy front-and-center in this emerging market.

Discover the future, today

Want to learn more about the Gr4vy product? Click here to check out their website and book a free product demo.