Charlotte fintech startup Payzer has raised another multimillion-dollar round of capital.
The company, co-founded in 2012 by Joe Giordano and Doug Little, closed a $23 million Series D funding round on June 21. The round was led by Birmingham, Alabama-based Harbert Growth Partners. Payzer previously raised about $20 million from major venture capital firms like Grotech Ventures, Idea Fund Partners and Route 66 Ventures.
Giordano said the team met with a lot of potential investors during the fundraise and believes Harbert will not only provide important financial capital but also assist in other ways to help the company grow.
"This money is going to be used to invest in growing the businesses at a high rate and allow us to maintain that rate of growth so we can capitalize on the market opportunities," he said. "We’re really just in the early stages of the story."
The startup's mobile app and online payment platform allows contractors to take payments in the field and provides customers with instant credit approval. Giordano said the platform was developed to serve the trade industry, as he calls it, "mobile retail."
Payzer serves contract workers in the HVAC, plumbing, roofing and electric fields.
"When we started providing electronic payment services for contractors it wasn’t cool, and there was a lot of concern," he said. "That has changed a lot over the last eight or nine years."
Giordano added, "4G and LTE rolled out in 2014, and it was one of the fastest adoption curves ever for new technology. It was step-change improvement in mobile connectivity, and that has enabled all of these mobile and cloud-based platforms to be really reliable in the field."
Currently, Payzer's platform has more than 5,000 contractor businesses, totaling more than 40,000 individual users.
"We're in every state; we're everywhere," he said.
