AOL co-founder Steve Case has come a long way since his days as running the dial-up giant. Case was started in 2007 as a payment network. Revolution Money is based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Today the company announced a $42 million round of funding. The Series C round was led by Goldman Sachs. Other investors that participated included Steve Case, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, former AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis, former Charles Schwab CEO David Pottruck, and JP Morgan Chairman David Golden.
The company previously raised $50 million Series B in September 2007. Thus far Revolution Money raised $92 million.
The idea behind Revolution Money is to lower credit card charges and other payment transfers. Merchants are charged an 0.5% transaction fee.
“It’s a vote of confidence from the insiders and we were able to bring in this affiliate of Goldman [a new investor],” stated Leonsis. “It’s such a big opportunity and big play. There hasn’t been a new entrant since PayPal, which was about a dozen years ago.”
Revolution Money’s two products are called RevolutionCard and RevolutionMoneyExchange. RevolutionCard is a credit card that charges the 0.5% per transaction which is compared to the 1.5% to 4% fee normally charged to traditional companies.
Revolution MoneyExchange is a P2P payment system that allows users to exchange money for free. MoneyExchange has about 400,000 registered users since the service started.
[via WSJ]
