Sydney, Australia-based electronic payments innovator SimplePay has raised $5 million from Fluce Capital and Versatile Group. This funding round is part of a private placement to raise growth capital to continue to accelerate SimplePay’s business model — which is working with over 500 cities around the world.
SimplePay offers a unified payment layer that connects payments infrastructure that enables connected and intelligent multi-step payment journeys that deliver key data insight that gives a city commercial pulse. And this is a major step towards full Smart City integration.
“This investment round will give us sufficient growth capital to scale our operations and implement our solutions globally,” said SimplePay Group founder Shadi Haddad in a statement. “We have an efficient business model where we are embedded into the retail, global transit & hospitality sectors with our infrastructure partners, delivering customer-centric payment journeys using our unified payment and revenue assurance solutions.”
SimplePay provides services to government and private operators in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and America. And the company has connected more than 14,000 locations onto its Smart City infrastructure since launching in 2012.
“I often see retailers treat payments as a necessity, rather than an opportunity. I am excited to be a part of the journey with SimplePay as they innovate the payments sector,” added Versatile Group CEO Marco Fahd.
Essentially, SimplePay’s cloud-based payments platform reduces the need for consumers to repeatedly present payment instruments and identity details at every step. And the technology is able to provide deep data insight to government and for managing a cities infrastructure across multi-payment journeys like private parking, transit, and hospitality operators connected into existing ticketing hardware and booking terminals.
“Traditional payment systems are built around 60-year old technology that no longer caters for a modern Smart City’s requirements,” explained SimplePay CEO Chris Hicks. “We’ve developed a fast and easy to deploy solution tailored for residents & visitors of Smart Cities that enhances their experience, delivering real time data insight for those who plan and manage the cities commercial needs and business flows.”
With this investment, SimplePay is planning to increase its coverage to over 40,000 locations within the next two years and push for a stronger entrance into the EMEA, GCC and Asian markets.
