PAYMENTS COMPLIANCE BUSINESS PAYTIA RAISES £1.2M FINANCING

• Paytia raises a £1.2m pre-series A seed investment round led by Bloc Ventures

• The company develops cutting edge, cloud-native telephony payment compliance platform[EW1] 

• The investment will enable Paytia to significantly scale its commercial and technical teams  

London, UK – Paytia, the specialist telephone payment compliance service provider [EW2] which allows businesses to take payment card details from customers safely and compliantly over the phone, has completed a £1.2 million pre-series A seed investment round, led by Bloc Ventures (Bloc), the venture capital company focussed [EW3] on early stage European deep technology investment.

Founded in 2016 in Southampton, Paytia’s technology ensures that customers are protected and remain in control of their card data throughout any “customer not present” payment transactions.

In a sector currently serviced by costly on-premise software solutions, Paytia’s cloud-native platform provides businesses with a scalable and affordable means to take card not present (“CNP”) payments from customers in full compliance of PCI-DSS standards and without breaching increasingly onerous payment and identity regulations.

With more call agents now based from home, Paytia has become a vital component to remaining compliant when taking telephone payments and protecting the exchange of personal data.

Curtis Nash, CEO of Paytia, commented:

“We are delighted to be joining the Bloc Ventures portfolio. Bloc’s team has unparalleled expertise in deep technology and we are convinced it is the right partner to support us on the next stage of this journey. Our technology has the ability to radically lower the high cost of entry that is prevalent in the telephone payment segment, and with Bloc’s financial and strategic supportwe are confident that we can build on the strong momentum we have generated over the last four years.”

Commenting on the investment, David Leftley, co-Founder and CTO of Bloc Ventures, added:”

“Paytia is precisely the sort of innovative and exciting Deep Tech business we enjoy partnering with. The team has significant commercial and technical experience in the payments space, including a previous successful start-up exit.  By offering a cloud-based, multi-tenanted global solution, Paytia is disrupting an industry that has high growth potential and we are incredibly excited about its future plans.”

Telephone transactions continue to be a central part of many business processes, with volumes remaining constant despite the shift to online. The verbal exchange of information over the phone creates a risk for both parties,to the customer who has no control over what the merchant does with their card data and to the merchant who is now entrusted with the protection of that card data. The transaction is governed by PCI-DSS compliance standards, while the data by Data Protection Regulation.

The strengthening of data protection regulations (e.g. GDPR in Europe) in terms of penalties, willingness of regulators to pursue and general public awareness, has significantly raised the costs of non-compliance for all businesses leading to a real increase in the cost of doing business for the merchant.

The Paytia solution is a prime example of simplicity of execution masking extreme complexity of design beneath the surface, encompassing deep knowledge of both telecommunications and payments standards. Through its cloud-native solution, the company already delivers the automated telephony service in 52 countries. The platform’s scalability and configurability enables very short deployment times, ease of integration and provides the foundation for rapid innovation introduction.

Paytia will use the proceeds from this funding round to increase its operational capability, invest in its team in order to scale the business and deliver the roadmap of additional features and services to complement the existing core product offering.

Paytia joins the Bloc Ventures deep tech [EW4] portfolio, which includes telecommunications technology providers Accelercomm and Zeetta Networks, high performance computing cloud provider YellowDog, quantum-based encryption technology business Crypta Labs and smart financial control platform provider Yordex.

-ENDS-

For further enquiries:

Paytia Ltd
Curtis Nash (CEO) +44 1803 224 729 / [email protected] / www.paytia.com

Bloc Ventures
Andrew Griffin (CFO) +44 20 3826 7100 / [email protected]

Powerscourt Group (Public Relations)
James White + 44 (0) 7855 432 699 / Jessica Hodgson +44 (0) 7561 424788
[email protected]

Notes to Editors

About Bloc Ventures

Bloc Ventures is a permanent venture capital company providing expert-led funding of European deep technology. Bloc is passionate about supporting and growing the next generation of European technology businesses at the forefront of telecommunications and computing. It provides its shareholders with access to the exciting, high growth early-stage European deep-technology landscape using an approach that lowers the risk of crystallising returns. 

The Bloc team has a tight complementary mix of technology, commercialisation and finance expertise borne out of extensive careers in the technology industry, including many years in corporate venture capital and M&A at Vodafone and ARM. They apply expertise via detailed due diligence pre-investment, and a hands-on collaborative approach with portfolio companies to scale them rapidly post-investment.  

Bloc serves as the catalyst for its portfolio companies, moving them from early-stage to growth businesses and driving substantial value-creation. This positions Bloc as the preferred investor partner for tech businesses. 

www.blocventures.com