AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners pump $25m into Zepto
The capital injection represents a tactical investment to back the next generation of payments innovation transforming the way Australian businesses and consumers transact, as the landscape pivots from legacy methods like credit cards and traditional direct debit, towards data-rich, real-time payments directly between bank accounts.
Zepto’s Series A will drive domestic growth, support its international expansion, enhance its market-leading payment infrastructure –– including an investment into building additional functionalities on top of the NPP’s PayTo framework –– and power a slew of strategic hires.
The investment comes after a period of explosive growth for the Byron Bay-born fintech, in which Zepto demonstrated 10X YoY revenue growth for each of the last four financial years since 2018, and is facilitating more than $4 billion in payment volume each month. Zepto currently serves hundreds of Australian businesses, including Binance Australia, Superhero, Novatti Group, Nimble, Powerpay, Till Payments, Bluestone, Rentbetter, Biz Pay and Get Blys.
Zepto is tracking to process more than $50 billion in payments in 2022.
Since January 2020, Zepto has experienced more than 100 per cent growth in headcount YoY, growing the team to nearly 100 employees in March 2022. The company is on track to double this again by the end of the year.
In late 2021, Zepto became both the first non-bank fintech approved to connect directly to the New Payments Platform (NPP) as a ‘Connected Institution’, and the first non-bank payments provider Accredited Data Recipient (ADR) under the ACCC’s Consumer Data Right (CDR).
The company’s foray into new markets will begin with the launch of its payments solutions for businesses in New Zealand, driven by growing demand for Zepto’s infrastructure in the region. The launch will also support the expansion of a number of its Australian merchant customers into the New Zealand market which to date has lacked on-par, innovative API-first payment platforms such as Zepto’s.
Chris Jewell, CEO of Zepto, said, “We are excited to partner with AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners on our first external funding round. Innovation across the real-time payments and open finance landscape is enabling merchants globally to create a new paradigm when it comes to customer experience. We at Zepto remain committed to delivering our merchants market-leading API tools to access and compose seamless payment experiences. From our roots as a bootstrapped Byron Bay upstart, Zepto has grown to become a market leader in the payments industry. We intend to use this capital to grow our team and technology in a meaningful, empowering way as we meet the demands of an ever-evolving domestic market, as well as accelerate Zepto’s expansion into international markets.”
James Cameron, Partner at AirTree Ventures, said, “The global payments landscape is in the middle of its biggest upheaval in decades, as open banking and real-time, bank-to-bank payments are transforming how we pay and get paid. With open banking and the NPP, Australia has found itself at the centre of this disruption – and Zepto is the leading innovator in this space. With companies like Afterpay, Athena and Airwallex, Australia has shown that we punch well above our weight in fintech innovation globally, and we believe Chris and the Zepto team are part of the next generation of fintech pioneers.”
Tom Hordern, Co Founder at Decade Partners, said, “Financial infrastructure businesses are the backbone of the fintech revolution. Zepto has scaled to facilitate more than A$50 billion p.a. in transactions on a run rate basis in just a few years – securing its position as one of the fastest growing players in this space. Merchants are choosing Zepto because it’s fast, secure and most importantly developer first and led. These attributes are key to Zepto’s success and Decade Partners believe this can be traced back to Zepto’s exceptional team and culture.”
Hundreds of Australian companies trust Zepto’s API-embedded infrastructure, which was originally developed by the company’s founders to solve the payments problems they experienced as merchants operating Australia’s hottest skydiving business.
Fast forward to 2022 and Zepto has evolved into an enterprise-ready platform that sits uniquely at the crossroads of open banking, real-time payments, changing consumer habits, rapidly evolving merchant capability, and a melting pot of opportunity.
For more information, visit zepto.com.au
