Fresh from a stint at the Fintech Pavillion at this year's EBAday in Dublin, social payments startup PayKey reports that it has secured more than half of its second- round funding target of $10 million.
The round is being led by MizMaa, a US and Chinese backed venture capital fund that focusses on investing in Israeli-based tech startups. With $6 million in the bag, conversations are ongoing with strategic investors with the round closing later in the third quarter of 2017.
The latest funding announcement follows a $6 million raise in November 2006 to further develop the mobile payment service, which lets bank customers transfer money instantly using popular social networks and messaging apps such as Facebook’s Messenger, WhatsApp and Twitter.
“In the first half of this year we’ve had unprecedented global interest from financial institutions and investors in our solution, which is now available through Westpac in Australia, Garanti Bank in Turkey, Davivienda in Colombia and Sparebank 1 in Norway, proving our ability to lead in the emerging social banking space,” says Daniel Peled, CEO of PayKey.
Additional rollouts are expected in Singapore and other territories in the coming months, he adds.
Turkey’s Garanti Bank launched the PayKey button to meet the P2P needs of millennial consumers as they chat over popular messaging services.
“Despite non-traditional competitors gaining traction in the market, the current disruption of non-bank P2P providers to banks has been widely overstated,” says Bora Uluduz, SVP of digital banking at Garanti Bank. “We view the mobile P2P transfer market as an exciting opportunity to meet the emerging expectations of our younger customers. With Garanti Mobile Keyboard, developed by PayKey and integrated to our mobile app - Garanti Mobile, we will provide a quick, intuitive and contextual P2P user experience across all social networks and messaging applications.”