A payments-focused financial technology company whose co-founder and many other executives are based in Cincinnati has added another eight figures to its latest round of funding.
Finix, based in San Francisco but with a “second HQ” in Cincinnati, just raised $30 million in combination with the $45 million it raised in March to achieve a total Series B round of $75 million, the company's Cincinnati-based co-founder and COO Sean Donovan told me.
Lightspeed Venture Partners led the Series B funding extension with American Express Ventures also participating.
Finix creates payments infrastructures that enable companies to process electronic payments through providers such as FIS, the successor to Symmes Township-based payments processor Worldpay.
Finix plans to use the capital to expand its team as it strives toward its goal of turning every software company into a payments company, co-founder and CEO Richie Serna said in a news release.
“We’ll double down on growing our team,” Donovan, a Cincinnati native and veteran of Worldpay and its predecessor, Vantiv, told me. “We’re not planning for the next few years, we’re planning for the next 10 years. We’ve got a massive task ahead of us so we raised (capital) now to continue bringing in top-tier talent, especially engineers, and focus on building.”
Finix employs about 20 at its local office in Columbia Tusculum. It has another 52 in the San Francisco Bay area and 13 remote workers among its 85 employees, Donovan said. He didn’t specify how many people it will add.
Its Cincinnati office makes up the core of Finix’s professional services team.
The financing round is particularly timely for Finix, Donovan said.
“Companies already recognized the power of embedding payments and software to transform their businesses, and Covid clearly accelerated the trend,” Donovan said. “The digital payments market has massively accelerated and we want to be sure we’re ready with more top-tier talent, especially engineers, to meet the influx of demand we’re already seeing.”
Finix expanded its local presence last year when it added four executives, including three former Worldpay/Vantiv employees, from locally based payments advisory firm Fintech 513.
Its largest Greater Cincinnati clients are Clubessential, a Blue Ash firm that manages membership for gyms and country clubs, and Pay Theory, an Evendale-based education company focused on how schools and parents interact around money. It also partners with FIS and Fifth Third Bank locally.
The payments business is a $2 trillion industry that’s growing at 6% a year. That growth rate is accelerating through the coronavirus pandemic as more companies shift their payments online.
