One of Cincinnati’s fastest-growing fintech startups has significantly increased its capital pool with the closing of its latest fundraise, adding key partners with banking and credit union ties.
Neural Payments, a Montgomery-based fintech and peer-to-peer payments provider, has raised $8 million in a Series A, led by New York-based investment adviser Mendon Venture Partners.
Mendon was joined in the round by Curql Collective, a fintech-focused strategic investment capital firm based in Des Moines, Iowa.
The raise, which Neural Payments co-founder and CEO Mick Oppy hinted at in August, will allow the company to further invest in sales, marketing and engineering efforts. It also will allow the company to increase hiring to keep up with demand and to accelerate growth.
“This funding not only allows us to accelerate our go-to-market strategy and bring our engineering plans to scale, but it provides an opportunity to connect with the right strategic partners,” Oppy told me. “These two groups represent banks and credit unions respectively, giving us a complete view of the financial institution landscape in the United States.”
Founded in 2019, Neural Payment’s software-as-a-service, or SaaS, solution bridges the gap between fintech and financial institutions, sitting inside an institution’s mobile banking app, allowing users to send money to anyone – no third-party app required.
If you wanted to send a friend $50, for example, Neural’s tech could funnel that payment to a bank or payments apps – cutting down on a clunky and often inconsistent experience. Neural Payments is targeting smaller community banks and credit unions that often can’t afford legacy solutions and/or that want to build brand loyalty.
The Series A brings the company’s funding total to $11 million, including a $1 million raise in 2020 and a $2 raise million in 2021.
The company also has grown its employee count by 50% since the beginning of the year. The goal is to roughly double again in size in 2023.
Neural Payments, a Cincy Inno “Startup to Watch” for 2022, currently has 32 banking partners with a goal of adding another 150 or more in 2023.
Oppy previously put the company’s potential customer base in the thousands.
In August, Neural Payments landed in the FIS Fintech Accelerator, a 12-week program backed by Jacksonville, Fla.-headquartered FIS (NYSE: FIS) and Little Rock’s Venture Center. The program will provide the company even more exposure. It culminates with a demo day Nov. 9 in Jacksonville.
FIS is actively working with nine of its 10 accelerator graduates from 2021.
