Rapyd, a global Fintech as a Service company announced today that it will acquire Korta, an Iceland-based payment card service provider.
Rapyd helps merchants, gig-economy platforms, and technology providers create and launch any fintech or commerce application powered from its unified cloud-based technology platform eliminating the need to build complex fintech and payment infrastructure. The acquisition of Korta provides Rapyd online acquiring and point-of-sale (POS) capabilities as the company grows its worldwide footprint. Korta is a fully licensed European Merchant Acquirer and principal member of VISA and Mastercard.
Changing market conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the global commerce landscape. Merchants are re-thinking growth strategies in the new environment and are looking for payment acceptance strategies that not only provide traditional online payment methods from Visa and MasterCard, but seek to reach the 4 Billion consumers that don’t have credit cards and pay through other means including cash, ewallets, bank transfers, and local debit cards.
Commenting on the Korta acquisition Rapyd CEO Arik Shtilman stated “Merchants looking at the new economic environment understand that they will need easier and quicker ways to scale their online businesses, as well as to establish an integrated omnichannel presence. By leveraging Korta’s omnichannel card acquiring technology we can expand our Fintech as a service platform into new channels and payment methods to provide merchants a truly integrated and localized solution with Rapyd’s easy-to-use APIs and automated self-service tools.”
Omnichannel experiences for store-based merchants have dramatically increased in 2020. According to an Emarsys/GoodData tracker survey of store-based retailers since March of this year online sales have exploded in a year-over-year comparison with Europe seeing increases in online orders up 71%, the U.S. and Canada growing by 56%, and APAC-region online orders soaring 82%.
Shtilman also noted “More flexible acquiring solutions that are not only feature-rich, but are also designed to enable faster speed-to-market are critical as store-based retailers begin to lean into ecommerce experiences. But even that isn’t enough in the new environment, global reach also matters. We believe Korta’s omnichannel card offering combined with the Rapyd Global Payments Network can provide merchants of any size a much better experience than current market offerings due to our ability to provide over 900 local payment methods in more than 100 countries.”
Founded in 2016, Rapyd has over 200 employees globally with operations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. In October 2019, Rapyd raised a US$100 million Series C financing putting the company’s valuation at over US$1Billion.