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Zepto Raises $25 Million In Series A The funds will be utilized to drive domestic growth, support its international expansion, enhance market-leading payment infrastructure, among others

By Shrabona Ghosh

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Company handout

Zepto, a real-time account-to-account merchant payment platform, on Monday raised $25 million in a Series A funding led by AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners.

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, said a statement..

The funds will be utilized to drive domestic growth, support its international expansion, enhance 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.

"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," said Chris Jewell, CEO of Zepto.

"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 center of this disruption – and Zepto is the leading innovator in this space," said James Cameron, partner at AirTree Ventures.

Since January 2020, Zepto has experienced more than 100 per cent growth in headcount year-on-year, 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. Zepto provides data-driven, real-time, account-to-account merchant payment solutions designed for the on-demand digital economy.

Shrabona Ghosh

Correspondent

A journalist with a cosmopolitan mindset. I lead a project called 'Corporate Innovations' wherein I cover corporates across verticals and try to tell stories on innovations. Apart from this, I write industry pieces on FMCGs, auto, aviation, 5G and defense. 
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