Vilnius, Lithuania-based kevin., a fintech startup that provides an advanced account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure to replace costly card transactions, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $65M (approximately €61.82M) in its Series A round of funding.
The funding comes just six months after the fintech company raised $10M (approximately €9.51M) in a Seed round, and brings kevin.’s total funding to $77M (approximately €73.24M). Since the Seed round, the company has also grown its team to more than 170 members working from 30 countries. It now looks to double the number of employees by 2023.
Investors in this round
The round was led by Accel Partners, an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in Seed, early and growth-stage investments. The firm has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
Luca Bocchio, Partner at Accel, says, “Tadas, Pavel and the kevin. team are powering the future of payments with their next-generation payments infrastructure. Offering a fast, seamless payment experience, with reduced costs and increased authentication rates, the time for A2A payments is now and kevin. has already had impressive momentum with its offering. With the launch of its unique POS payments product, the opportunity ahead is huge and we’re looking forward to partnering with the team on their journey!”
The Series A round also saw participation from Eurazeo and all existing investors, including OTB Ventures, Speedinvest, OpenOcean, and Global Paytech Ventures.
Additional investors in the round also include Harry Stebbings, Founder of 20VC, Ilkka Paananen, CEO & co-founder of Supercell, Amitabh Jhawar, Ex-CEO of Venmo, and other angels.
“Unlocking open banking to disrupt payments”
Founded in 2018 by Pavel Sokolovas and Tadas Tamosiunas, kevin. is on a mission to offer innovative and convenient payment solutions that remove unnecessary intermediaries in the payment process.
The company has leveraged the opportunity provided by open banking and claims to have proven itself to be the leader in web and in-app A2A payments in the European Economic Area, where it has the broadest PSD2 bank API coverage on the market.
Recently, the startup also stepped into POS terminal payments in physical stores by introducing an NFC A2A payments solution. The company claims their solution comes with a ‘seamless’ user experience comparable to a card payment experience. kevin.’s A2A in-store payments offering lies in the fact that it does not require any changes on the merchant’s technical side: it uses existing POS terminal infrastructure and widely used and intuitive NFC payment technology.
Capital utilisation
Tadas Tamosiunas says, “With this investment, we’ll continue expanding our international team of experts and developing products that are transforming the payment industry. We have big plans for the future and I’m confident that our full suite of next-generation infrastructure for web, mobile and in-store payments will help businesses gain a competitive edge. Given the fact that the implementation of the A2A in-store payments solution is quick and cost-effective, we forecast rapid roll-out and scale.”
By the end of this year, the company aims to secure 35 per cent coverage of POS payment terminals across Europe and looks to achieve more than 85 per cent by the end of 2023. This is equivalent to the current coverage of major card schemes.
