Embedded finance acts as the bridge that connects businesses, their customers, and financial solution providers by integrating financial applications directly into a business’s tech stack. This allows customers to complete transactions within a single platform, boosting conversion and reducing abandonment. Gone are the days of logging into PayPal, being redirected, and then completing the transaction over a number of tedious steps. This unprecedented disintermediation is fueling a new wave of innovation. Railsr, formely Railsbank, is an embedded finance platform that makes this possible. The firm’s finance-as-a-service platform allows businesses to seamlessly integrate payments, point-of-sale lending and buy now, pay later, rewards, insurance, and cards with its platform all while meeting security and compliance requirements. The industry is expected to process payments that exceed $7T by 2026 and Railsr’s product breadth, product depth, and platform support make it an ideal solution for companies that are simplifying the customer experience. The company recently announced its Series C round, a combination of debt and equity that brings the total funding raised to $187M+.
London TechWatch caught up with Railsr CEO and Cofounder Nigel Verdon to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We closed our series C, raising $46M with a number of investors including Anthos Capital, who led the Railsr Series B in July 2021, Ventura, Outrun Ventures, CreditEase, Moneta, and Mars Capital.
Tell us about your product or service.
Railsr is the world-leading embedded finance experiences platform. Positioned as the AWS for the financial layer of the internet; its platform has all the technology, product capabilities, operations, and regulatory licences that brands need to fully utilise embedded finance.
What inspired the start of Railsr?
The frustration of the early wave of fintech, all of us building exactly the same infrastructure which added no value.
How is it different?
Railsr is the first global turnkey platform for embedded finance experiences.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
We focus on the embedded finance market. A Market that is seeing significant growth. Bain & Company for example commented that: “Financial services embedded into e-commerce and other software platforms accounted for $2.6 trillion, nearly 5%, of total US financial transactions in 2021, and by 2026 this will exceed $7 trillion”.
What’s your business model?
B2B, SaaS, ARR model.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We’ve already prepared and executed our plans, it’s all about reconfiguring the business for a clear route to profitability.
What was the funding process like?
I’m a veteran of it, it’s never easy.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The worst capital markets I’ve ever seen.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
The scale of our business and the size of the market.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
A clear plan and execution of that plan to be a profitable business that delights customers.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
“Make hard decisions to survive”.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Continuing our journey in the embedded finance market.
What is your favourite restaurant in London?
Pizarro, Bermondsey.
