Revealing its new website, Traxpay also announced that it had closed a $15Mln B Round of funding. Producing a network specialized in B2B Payments , Traxpay’s latest fund included multinational firms across different industries that are expected to become strategic partners for the company in the future. Investing in Traxpay were Commerzbank through its corporate incubator and Software AG, as well as earlier investors. In addition to the funding, Traxpay announced that it has partnered with MasterCard to help scale their B2B Dynamic Payment Platform.
The funding is notable as it marks another instance of a global bank looking outside of its own walls for technological innovation. Due to security concerns and regulatory requirements, larger financial institutions have garnered a reputation of being slow adopters of new technology. However, due in part to the rapid change of technology standards as well as a fear of seeing their businesses disrupted by upstarts, banks and other financial institutions have become more proactive in the FinTech space, with seemingly every week, Accelerator program or startup completion being backed by a major banking player.
In the case of Traxpay, the firm is building a payment platform targeted towards the B2B supply chain market, offering a uniform network for billing, executing transactions and monitoring payments with suppliers and buyers. For users, the network is meant to remove processing inefficiency,in which a company would need to monitor transactions with partners taking place over multiple payment channels. Commerzbank’s involvement with Traxpay puts them in position to potentially offer the B2B Dynamic Payment offering to their commercial customers, as well as profit if the network scales to include additional banks and business users. In regards to Software AG, the firm acquired data processing firm APAMA, whose products are used in creating dynamic real- ime handling of data. Within the trading industry, among users are FX market maker brokers and banks that use APAMA’s technology to dynamically control streaming of liquidity and risk management. As such, Software AG’s would be expected to provide data processing assistance to Traxpay in handling payments conducted on the B2B network.
Similar to the current credit card network, which is a combination of thousands of individual banking platforms within a unified system allowing consumers to execute a credit card payment around the globe, Traxpay is aiming to create a similar standard for B2B payments. Overall, like Traxpay, the payment sector continues to be a hot area for venture funds and corporate investors. Within the FinTech sector, investments in the payments industry, whether to fund the creation of B2B networks, P2P decentralized exchanges, advancements in mobile payments, or other innovations, has become a ‘land grab’ to control the future of money transfer.
