Vyne, the specialist account-to-account payments platform, today announces it has secured $15.5 million in seed funding from leading fintech investors including Hearst Ventures, Entrée Capital, Triplepoint, Seedcamp, Venrex, Founder Collective and Partech alongside angel investment from Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla and CEO of Cazoo, Charlie Dellingpole, CEO and founder of ComplyAdvantage and Will Neale founder of Grabyo.

This investment marks the largest seed funding round in the UK open banking market to date, cementing Vyne and account-to-account payments at the centre of the future of payments.

Founded in 2019 by true payment experts, Vyne’s innovative full-stack solution brings together decades of combined industry experience to enable direct, secure, and faster payments for merchants and consumers alike - challenging the status-quo of today’s traditional card and alternative payment methods.

By transforming the checkout experience payments can be completed by consumers in three-clicks and merchants can engage customers through more digital channels such as QR codes and pay-by-link, which can be sent by email, SMS or in person.

Coupling user experience with improved operational merchant services, Vyne empowers business growth by increasing conversion, reducing cost per transaction, streamlining business operations with quick, easy invoicing, and by providing a real-time view of cash-flow, which cannot be offered today.

As merchant and consumer demands evolve, a global movement towards real time, seamless payments is driving the adoption of open banking and fuelling challengers like Vyne. The $15.5 million investment will elevate Vyne’s ambitious growth trajectory by enabling them to attack the global opportunity, increase international coverage and bring new use cases to market, forging the path to a future of account-to-account payments.

Megumi Ikeda, Managing Director at Hearst Ventures, comments: “The global financial ecosystem is moving rapidly away from traditional payments systems and towards open banking and real-time payments. Vyne sits at the bleeding edge of this revolution, by improving the payment experience for all stakeholders. The team’s commercial success is testament to their expertise and commitment to innovation, and we’re delighted to be supporting their continued growth.”

Reshma Sohoni, Partner and co-founder at Seedcamp, adds: "As leading payments experts, Vyne are the perfect team to capitalise on the new opportunities for innovation brought about by open banking. Upon first meeting the team we really bought into their vision of delivering a frictionless, more secure end-to-end payments experience for consumers – all while saving merchants money. We’ve been enormously excited by their commercial progress to date and believe Vyne has the opportunity to become a global payments giant.”

Avi Eyal, co-founder and Managing Partner, Entrée Capital, adds: “Entrée Capital has a track record investing in high-growth fintechs such as Rapyd, Stripe, Riskified, Kuda, and Fundbox. Vyne fills a complementary and unmet need in the market for seamless, fast, and direct payment solutions. Their payments expertise is unmatched and their vision of disruption is so significantly large that we believe they will become a leader in the payments market over the next few years.”

Karl MacGregor, CEO at Vyne, comments: “At its heart, Vyne was founded with the simple vision of perfecting payments for businesses and consumers alike. This seed round will further propel Vyne on its mission to make account-to-account payments the best way to pay and get paid around the world. The calibre of investment we have received is testament to not only the team's hard work to date but also the opportunity open banking presents to overhaul the traditional banking and payment infrastructure that merchants and consumers have been beholden to for decades.”

Vyne processes millions of pounds worth of transactions each month at a growth rate of 95% month on month. In the last quarter Vyne made a number of strategic hires including ex-Klarna and Laybuy heavyweight Luke Flomo as Chief Revenue Officer and Ors Kardos, previously of booking.com, as Director of Engineering. The business has also recently opened headquarters in Holborn, London.