London-based FinTech startup Paybase has received a grant of almost £700,000 from Innovate UK to democratise eMoney infrastructure for SMEs and startups. 

Innovate UK is the nation’s innovation agency, which aims to drive growth by working with UK companies to de-risk, enable and support innovation. In the last 10 years, Innovate UK has helped more than 7,600 organisations, with projects estimated to have added more than £11.5 billion to the UK economy and created 55,000 jobs. 

Anna Tsyupko, CEO of Paybase, said: “We would like to thank Innovate UK for the grant which will go towards developing the business and perfecting our technology.”

“The electronic money (eMoney) space is competitive but we’re offering something different that will have a real impact on the SME sector. Electronic money infrastructure allows for the easy opening of eMoney accounts – lightweight financial instruments – in-app or directly on your website. This makes it perfect for escrow-like accounts, peer-to-peer-transactions and attached physical prepaid cards to name but a few applications. Essentially, it meets payment requirements that cannot simply be accommodated by a payment gateway and is the cornerstone of a lot of today’s FinTech innovation. Due to the complexity, legacy of systems and multiple partners required to create such infrastructure, however, the eMoney space is expensive, inaccessible and inflexible.”

“Innovation is key and the Paybase Platform will allow startups to access eMoney infrastructure without pouring huge amounts of resource into building their own, or relying on outdated legacy providers. This will permit partners to focus on their core offering, concentrate on listening to their customers and building the best products possible.”

The Paybase Platform is perfect for eCommerce marketplaces, gig economy platforms, crowdfunding platforms, charities or fundraisers as typically these platforms require more than just a simple payment gateway. With the Paybase Platform online marketplaces, for example, are able to easily create individual accounts for merchants, fully automate and customise fee collection, understand their customers and activities and protect their customers from fraud. Utilising the Paybase Logic Engine, marketplaces have the power to define custom business logic before and after transactions helping to retain their customers through beautiful payment experiences. 

The Paybase Platform was developed after the team went through the process of building a simple peer-to-peer payments app - Payfriendz. It became apparent that many payments partners are still set up to support the old-fashioned payments world - not the new, innovative FinTech companies that are quickly emerging. Going through this experience gave the Paybase team invaluable first-hand insight. They applied this insight to create something truly different which will enable  other businesses to avoid the struggles they had to face.

Due to be launched later this year, the Paybase Platform will allow partners to access eMoney infrastructure through one unified API which has been carefully designed to help businesses of all sizes - from startup to enterprise - to lower costs, simplify processes and build better products. For more information see the Paybase.