Connected Commerce Platform Company Poynt Secures $100 Million In Funding

By Annie Baker ● Nov 14, 2018

Poynt — which is a company that developed an operating system for smart payment terminals worldwide — has announced that it has raised $100 million in Series C funding from strategic partners Elavon and National Australia Bank (NAB). And Poynt plans to use the funding to grow its talent, invest in its product, and expand into new markets like Asia, Europe, and South America.

The World Bank estimates that the global world product is expected to surpass $85 trillion this year with more than $22 trillion being transacted on payment cards. And more than 176 million payment terminals are expected to ship by 2020. Poynt is aiming to transform commerce with an open operating system for any smart payment terminal on every store countertop in the world.

“Smartphones changed the way we search, buy and communicate — not only because the hardware was beautiful, but because iOS and Android transformed a ubiquitous utility into a platform for innovation where developers could build once and distribute everywhere,” said Poynt founder and CEO Osama Bedier in a statement. “Our vision is to transform retail by becoming that innovation platform for payment terminals everywhere. We give developers a technical canvas to build the experiences merchants and their customers have come to expect – and ultimately, make visiting your local store the personal experience it was always meant to be.”

The Poynt OS is creating a new app economy for merchants by enabling developers to write once and distribute everywhere. Poynt OS is based on Android and it is hardware-agnostic and seamlessly plugs into new and legacy retail software systems, which allows merchants to extend their capabilities with third-party and custom apps. Poynt is expecting Poynt OS adoption on at least half of the world’s top payment terminal manufacturers in 2019.

Poynt has invested five years of research and development to reimagine the ubiquitous payment terminal into a connected and multi-purpose device that runs on an open platform. And the company has shipped nearly 150,000 terminals in the last 16 months. Over 30 million consumers have transacted on a Poynt terminal and the total payment volume is expected to exceed $25 billion over the next year. And Poynt has signed partnerships with global banks like Elavon (U.S. Bank), Evertec, Worldpay, J.P. Morgan Chase, Itau Unibanco, Alipay, Nexi, EVO, and Mashreq Bank.

“Elavon has been a leader in payment processing for over 20 years because of our dedication to helping our customers grow by providing some of the most innovative payments technology on the market,” added Elavon CEO Jamie Walker. “We have a strong and trusted partnership with Poynt, and we are excited to support this next phase of the company’s growth.”