Visa has joined a $25 million funding round in Indian B2B payments company PayMate.
Visa's investment in PayMate - which automates the procure-to-pay payments cycle for businesses - follows a deal struck between the two in March this year to aid the Indian firm's expansion into the Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region.
Under the agreement, Visa’s commercial financial institution clients will extend PayMate’s platform to their corporate and small business customers, giving these customers the ability to make faster payments using Visa commercial cards.
T R Ramachandran, group country manager for Visa in India and South Asia says: “There is an opportunity to bring efficiencies into the B2B payments supply chain via richer data and automated processes. PayMate’s platform makes it possible for businesses to replace time-consuming, expensive manual processes with digital ways to manage their working capital. At Visa, we believe it is critical to partner with local players who are bringing innovation to our global payments network, and our investment in PayMate reflects that.”
The deal caps a busy couple of weeks for Visa, which this month has pumped cash into Indonesian ride-hailing app GoJek, payments infrastructure builder Finix and crypto custodian Anchorage.
Other investors in PayMate's Series D round include Recruit Strategic Partners (Venture capital Arm of Recruit Co. Ltd. Japan), Brand Capital, existing investor Mayfair 101
Ajay Adiseshann, founder & CEO, PayMate. says: “We are very excited to have Visa come onboard as an investor which will help complement our existing commercial partnership with them and help us scale faster by combining capital with Visa’s network. In addition, Recruit holdings from Japan, our existing investor Mayfair101 and Brand Capital’s participation in this round further validates our business model, traction and growth potential.”
PayMate initially started life as a consumer-facing proposition before pivoting to tackle the B2B payments impasse. The 13-year old firm is currently used by over 35,000 businesses to process approximately $5B in payments annually.