Checkout Startup Volume Notches $2.4M

Volume, which calls itself a “transparent checkout startup,” announced it has raised a pre-seed capital fundraising round of $2.4 million.

The funding round was led by Firstminute Capital and also included Seedx and Hatch Ventures, according to a company news release posted by media outlets including IBS Intelligence.

Also joining the round, according to Volume, were Christian Faes of LendInvest and Russ Carroll, formerly of Klarna, and others associated with MADE.COM, Mastercard, Visa and American Express.

Volume’s value proposition is that it offers eCommerce transaction fees substantially lower than those offered by longer-term players in the space.

A post on Volume states that at least for the short-term, Volume will a 0.75% charge for executing a payment from any bank. According to the post, a typical fee from a major player in the payments space is 3%.

U.K.-based Volume states in its marketing materials that it is able to offer the lower fees because by facilitating account-to-account transactions.

“Volume radically upgrades today’s broken customer experience by creating a more transparent payment infrastructure that drives transaction costs to zero,” the announcement states. “At the same time, it provides a seamless checkout experience for online shoppers.”

Volume also states its system is five times faster than common payment transfers.

“Ecommerce has a ‘hidden tax’ in the form of payment commissions to cards and e-wallets, and consumers don’t know this ultimately impacts on the prices they pay,” Volume founder and Chief Executive Simone Martinelli said in a prepared statement. “We want to finally bring transparency to this enormous market and kill all hidden fees. What Transferwise did for cross-border payments, we’ll do for online payments.”

Volume estimated that the difference between more frequently charged rates and its planned lower rates totals $800 billion annually.

Volume states in the funding announcement that it “has already onboarded more than 50 merchants across retail, food delivery and digital marketplaces in the U.K.”

The company said will use the new funding to expand its U.K. operations and then will eye the North American market.

The company maintains offices in London and in Poland, where it has an engineering team.