PayKey Lands Big PayDay in Series B Funding Round
Remember when we heard about how customers were increasingly okay with looking outside banks for banking services? How even social banking was becoming that much more valid? Well, some firms are taking that ball and running with it, as new word out of Israeli firm PayKey noted that the company had raised a hefty $10 million as part of its Series B funding round.
The round was led by MizMaa, but had plenty of outside interest including SBI Group, SixThirty, Fintech71, The FinLab, Siam Commercial Bank’s Digital Ventures operation, and several other firms besides along with some previous investors coming back to the well. The company so far has raised $16 million.
PayKey actually works alongside banks to allow the banks to bring out new options for smartphone users. With PayKey systems in place, banks can offer smartphone users new access to financial services, as well as communications with the bank itself and more one-way flows of information.
PayKey’s best effort here is the Mobile Banking Keyboard, a patent-pending system that allows easy access to a slate of services. These include everything from simple balance checks to peer-to-peer (P2P) payments to even cash withdrawals without a card. It can even be used within other mobile apps without needing to open the bank app, which might make shopping on a mobile device even simpler.
PayKey’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Peled commented “It’s been a really successful year for us, as we’ve doubled the number of employees and signed seven commercial deals with banks around the world. Asia is a very innovative and strategic market for us, and so it’s very exciting to see such support and interest from the Asian market in this funding round.”
While Peled is right in that Asia is a very big market for fintech right now—especially given that Asian banks are eager for a means to better compete with mobile payments systems—hopefully Peled isn’t stopping at Asia. The tools contained in PayKey would be useful in most any bank, especially as banks look for more opportunities to fend off the rising tide of mobile payment systems.
Banks from Europe to North America would be eager to get in on this action, and Peled may have just the system to help them get in faster.