GoCardless secured a Series G funding round of 312 million dollars reaching a valuation of 2.1 billion dollars. The investment was led by Permira, receiving support from a new investor, BlackRock Private Equity Partners. Since the last funding round of 95 million dollars in December 2020, the value of the company has more than doubled, while the number of its employees has increased by 85%.
The company is working on recurring debit payments for more than 70,000 businesses worldwide and will use the new funds in its open banking strategy, challenging the dominance of credit cards in direct payments, making bank-to-bank debit payments available as a lower-cost alternative to cards.
The company said that its Instant Bank Pay product has already helped thousands of merchants in the UK and Europe process one-time payments worth millions of dollars. Both Klarna and PayPal recently signed agreements with GoCardless to act as a payment partner from account-to-account of their choice.
With the new funding, GoCardless will finally add further technology and payment expertise to its board of directors, with Michael Rouse, Klarna’s former commercial director, and Koen Köppen, Klarna’s chief technology officer and a member of Mollie’s board of directors, participating as an independent director.