Online payments business GoCardless has secured the funds it needs to build out its product and expand its merchant base across the UK and Europe.
London-headquartered GoCardless, which was set up by Oxford graduates Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Bloomfield and Matt Robinson in 2010, works by providing a payment platform that allows merchants to take payments online via Direct Debit. After first use of the service, users can then authorise future payments anywhere that the service is offered with one click.
It began its funding efforts in February 2012 when Accel Partners, Passion Capital and YCombinator combined to inject $1.5 million. Its new £3.3 million Series A round takes its total venture capital takings to $4.8 million.
The involvement of YCombinator came about following GoCardless’ participation in the accelerator’s summer program in Silicon Valley in 2011 to develop the company.
Since its launch, GoCardless has singed up 5,000 merchants to use its services and has partnered with online accountancy software providers KashFlow and FreeAgent to allow customers to collect invoiced payments.
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Robinson comments, ‘Over the past year Accel and Passion have supported us to grow to a team of 23, with some of the best developers in London.
‘We are now focusing on adding functionality to the product to allow people to have more flexibility in the way they do payments, through variable Direct Debits.’
The founding partners of venture capital backer Passion Capital (Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero) have been involved in a number of sizeable exits including the purchase of Skype by Ebay and Last.fm’s acquisition by CBS.
