The round, announced Wednesday (Nov. 29), follows Paysend’s recent partnership with Mastercard, which allows the company to enhance cross-border payments for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) through its Open Payments Network (OPN).
“This significant investment is a testament to the strength of Paysend’s vision: to build the best-in-class cross-borders solution for businesses and consumers, making money transfer simple for everyone,” Ronnie Millar, Paysend’s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release.
In addition to the funding, the U.K.-based Paysend announced a partnership with TelevisaUnivision, the world’s largest Spanish language media company. This collaboration will target the USA-Latin America money-transfer corridors, and will see Paysend’s advertising featured on TelevisaUnivision’s network over the next three years.
This has been a busy year for Paysend working with other companies. In addition to the above-mentioned partnerships, the company also teamed with Western Union on cross-border money transfer services.
Announced in October, this collaboration is designed to provide seamless and efficient cross-border money transfer capabilities to customers using Western Union’s digital platform, and offers an additional direct-to-card payout option, enabling Western Union customers to send funds directly to Visa and Mastercard debit cards.
Advertisement: Scroll to Continue
Paysend also recently joined forces with Visa. As PYMNTS wrote in September, one of the key advantages of the partnership is the real-time nature of the transactions, made possible through Visa Direct — Visa’s real-time money movement network — which connects 3.4 billion card credentials worldwide in seconds.
Abdul Abdulkerimov, executive chairman and co-founder of Paysend, told PYMNTS that the ability to send money in real-time to cards has substantially improved the cross-border money transfer experience for consumers around the globe.
Citing instant messaging service WhatsApp as an example, Abdulkerimov said people have “been used to receiving information immediately but [until now] money was not playing that game.” Addressing this expectation in the money movement sector is a “game changer” when it comes to costs and service speed, he added.
Beyond that, Abdulkerimov said the Paysend-Visa collaboration also involves technologies that foster financial inclusion for millions of unbanked and underserved customers, especially those in cash-heavy economies.
“We’re working together to ensure that we’re not just focusing on those who already have a card or a bank account, but also those who are not yet benefiting from the financial system,” he told PYMNTS.
