Finix, a startup that provides payments-related services to other companies, announced it has extended its Series B financing with a $30 million investment led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and American Express Ventures. The fintech startup has now raised over $96 million in venture capital. According to CEO and co-founder Richie Serna, $90 million of that total was grabbed in the last year alone.
Finix declined to disclose its revenue, revenue growth, new valuation, current profitability, or number of customers in an interview with TechCrunch. Serna was willing to disclose that Finix’s transaction volume more than quadrupled from Q2 2019 to Q2 2020 as a comp for customer growth, but declined to be more granular on the changing data.
Finix helps other startups set up their own payment processing infrastructure systems in-house. Sometimes, businesses will go to a company like Stripe, which takes processing fees and transaction fees, to add payments to their service. Finix helps businesses bring Stripe-esque services and payment infrastructure, in-house. The idea is that companies can thus pocket the extra change that third-party payment providers would have otherwise cut away from transactions, minus the cost that Finix charges them. Thus Finix works as the plumbing inside of a startup, while a company like Stripe is more similar to a plug-and-play system.
It would be fascinating to know Finix’s customer breakdown because it would give a sense of how healthy it’s business really is. The company makes money by charging customers a software fee and a sliding fee based on the number of payments it processes. Even though it doesn’t make money on a per-transaction basis, it does benefit from customers that have high transaction volume.
Finix’s sweet spot for ideal customers was once businesses in the $50 million in transactions per year bucket. Serna would not comment on if its focus has changed. Finix recently launched Flex, a new underwriting model that is aimed at helping businesses on archaic systems reduce switching costs between payment providers.
“We want to basically be the payment provider for a company at any stage of their high growth or stabilized growth perspective,” he said.
The new cash will be used to double Finix’s team of 85 people by mid-2021.
The fintech world was unevenly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which is still happening. Startups helping small mom-and-pop stores bring on money, like Square, likely saw dips in transactions as people stayed at home and businesses shut down. Finix sits on the other range of payments, enabling online merchants and apps to bring on payments. The boom in ecommerce amid these unprecedented times might be why a business like Finix is growing like it is 2019. As another data point, Serna said its total customers have grown monthly.
Serna, again noting Finix’s transaction volume multiple of 4.5x from Q2 2019 to Q2 2020, says that the coronavirus pandemic has not confronted the business with “many challenges.”
For now, it appears, Finix’s extension round is a story of strength versus survival.
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