BBVA's investment arm has led a $12 million Series A funding round in checkout-free payments technology startup Grabango.
BBVA's Propel Venture Partners was joined in the oversubscribed round by Ridge Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Commerce Ventures, and Founders Fund.
Founded in 2016 by Pandora Radio CTO Will Glaser, Grabango uses computer vision and machine learning systems to maintain a virtual shopping basket for each person’s store visit and claims to accurately process millions of simultaneous transactions.
Checking out is automatic, with shoppers either paying the traditional way at a cashier or by smartphone.
The move to cashierless stores is gathering pace, with big players such as Amazon investing heavily in the technology.
Grabango is looking to grab a major slice of the pie, filing 17 patents and securing deals with four major US chains that serve more than 600 million shoppers a year.
Says Glaser: "We don't want to be the center of attention, but rather for our systems to work so smoothly in the background they are completely taken for granted."