Growth Equity Investor FTV Capital Leads Round, Japan’s E-Commerce Leader Rakuten Joins Along with Participation from Existing Investors
PALO ALTO, CA — WePay, the leading provider of payments as a service for online platforms and marketplaces, today announced $40 million in Series D financing. This latest round will help the company expand its services globally.
The funding follows another record quarter for WePay. The company delivered a 123% increase in revenue in Q1 compared to the same period one year ago. It also ushered in a 159% increase in users getting paid through platforms like GoFundMe, FreshBooks, and Constant Contact. WePay looks to accelerate the growth by supporting platforms in new geographies.
Lead investor FTV Capital brings extensive domain expertise in payments and enterprise technology to WePay. Rakuten, Japan’s largest e-commerce company and one of the world’s largest online marketplaces, brings the unique perspective of a global marketplace. All existing institutional investors, including Highland Capital Partners, August Capital, Continental Investors and Ignition Partners, participated in this round, which brings WePay’s total financing to $75 million.
As part of the transaction, FTV Capital partner Chris Winship will join WePay’s board of directors and Rakuten FinTech Fund managing partner Oskar Miel will join WePay’s Advisory Board.
“Payments are one of the most critical challenges for online platforms, and before WePay they’ve had to build complex, proprietary systems to facilitate payments,” said Bill Clerico, CEO of WePay. “We built our solution to help platforms and marketplaces facilitate payments, without the accompanying risk and regulatory overhead. We’re excited to further invest in our product and global expansion, while leveraging the expertise of domain experts like FTV and Rakuten.”
“As part of a successful long-term theme, FTV continues to look for innovative, high-growth payments companies leveraging technology to capitalize on the massive opportunities in e-commerce,” said Chris Winship, partner at FTV Capital. “WePay solves a real challenge for platforms driving commerce today, allowing SaaS companies and marketplaces to seamlessly process payments for their users, without the overhead typically associated with bringing a payment solution to market. We’re highly impressed with Bill and his proven management team and look forward to partnering with the company on its exciting growth initiatives, including international expansion.”
Over the last five years, e-commerce has shifted from traditional retailers to marketplaces like Airbnb and Uber. Connecting buyers and sellers, however, creates real operational challenges around payments. WePay provides the control and flexibility “platforms” need to seamlessly facilitate payments without the risk, regulatory and operational challenges typically associated with the new marketplace model.
About WePay
WePay powers payments for thousands of online platforms, including Care.com, Constant Contact, FreshBooks, GoFundMe and Meetup. WePay protects its partners from risk and regulatory exposure, while supporting a seamless experience for their end-users. For more information visit www.wepay.com.
About FTV Capital
FTV Capital is a growth equity investment firm that has raised over $1.8 billion since inception to invest in high-growth companies offering a range of innovative solutions in three sectors: enterprise solutions, financial services, and payments/transaction processing. FTV’s experienced team leverages its domain expertise and proven track record in each of these sectors to help motivated management teams accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network, a group of the world’s leading enterprises and executives who have helped FTV portfolio companies for more than a decade. Founded in 1998, FTV Capital has invested in 85 portfolio companies, including payments and transaction processing companies CardConnect, CashStar, Clearent, Credorax and WorldFirst, and has offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit ftvcapital.com.
About Rakuten
Rakuten, Inc. is one of the world’s leading Internet services companies. The Rakuten FinTech Fund invests in disruptive financial services start-ups across the globe, with a focus on North America and Europe. The fund targets early and later stage investments in innovative financial companies that offer attractive return potential. Rakuten FinTech fund also acts as a bridge between entrepreneurs and Rakuten’s financial services, granting access to its expertise in banking, credit cards, insurance, securities and asset management in Japan and internationally. For more information visit global.rakuten.com/corp/global.rakuten.com/corp/.
WePay is a registered trademark, and Veda is a trademark, of WePay, Inc.
Contacts
Karen Derr Gilbert
FTV CAPITAL
(415) 229-3044
kgilbert@ftvcapital.com
