London FinTech Yaspa has received £9m investment to fuel its expansion in the United States.
Yaspa provides instant payment and identity services, using open banking technology and AI to help regulated businesses elevate customer intelligence – and cashflow – via its proprietary real-time payments solution, Intelligent Payments.
It processes payments across a growing number of markets including Europe. It has also recently incorporated a US entity, based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The funding round was led by Discerning Capital and included Metavallon and TechStars Ventures. Discerning believes Yaspa’s account-to-account payments process will disrupt the gambling payments ecosystem while adding native player protections.
Yaspa is led by CEO James Neville, who co-founded the company in 2017 after having previously served as a CTO at Worldpay.
He said: “This significant investment marks a major milestone for Yaspa. It enables us to take our proven technology into a new market at pace – hiring a local team, building strategic partnerships and adapting our platform to meet the specific needs of operators.
“We’re looking forward to supporting businesses that want to lead on compliance, player safety and user experience as the market matures.”
David Williams, partner at Discerning Capital, will join the Yaspa board following the transaction.
“The high-risk nature of gambling payments makes it an area in need of innovation and we believe Yaspa addresses two of the biggest issues: chargebacks and player protections,” he added.
“We believe that any operator who evaluates Yaspa’s A2A product versus their existing payments provider will end up adding Yaspa.”