Payments fintech mx51 raises $25 million in less than 12 months since launching

Bank-grade payments fintech company mx51 has raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Acorn Capital, Artesian, Commencer Capital and Mastercard.

The funds represent mx51’s first major round of investment, secured less than 12 months after mx51 spun out of Assembly Payments in May 2020. The business is led and founded by former Westpac executive and former Assembly Payments Co-CEO Victor Zheng.

The round will allow mx51 to rapidly expand in Australia and build out further functionality to compete with other payment platforms.

Banks and acquirers leverage mx51’s technology to offer a white-label rich, robust and secure payment platform for merchants that competes with solutions such as Stripe, Tyro and Square.

This helps these companies maintain a key relationship with their business customers, which they can build upon with additional financial services.

Thanks to its launch partnership with Westpac the company has processed over $1 billion in transactions since founding last year. Lune Croissanterie, Salvation Army, Carla Zampatti are a few of the merchants using the platform via Westpac.

It expects to grow its total volume to over $10 billion within the next 12 months as it closes partnerships with more major Australian financial institutions. It’s also aiming to become the first true multi-channel payments platform whereby merchants can seamlessly take payments across in-store and online channels.

As part of its growth trajectory, mx51 is aiming to grow its headcount by 30% this year adding to its team of product, engineering and operations professionals.

“mx51 is helping Australian banks and acquirers, who are the backbone of our financial services sector, compete with a myriad of nimble overseas competitors who are muscling in on the payments sector,” mx51 CEO Victor Zheng said.

“We’re able to partner closely and quickly with major financial institutions as we designed the platform to be bank-grade from inception. The size of our first ever round speaks for itself in terms of how bullish we are about rapidly rolling out our platform across Australia.”

“Our partnership with Westpac has been a fantastic incubator for the product, and now we are in advanced discussions around expanding to other financial services institutions across Australia.”