Cross-border bank processor Payall has closed a $10 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a press release said.
Payall has a single shared platform which will fuel compliance automation, risk mitigation and more transparency, the release said. The platform’s services include specialized, inclusive payment orchestration for cross-border payments offered through banks or financial institutions.
The company processes funds which move “globally at the speed of data,” with recipients getting their funds in minutes or seconds through a variety of payment channels.
“a16z is rightly famous for the landmark assertion that ‘every company will be a fintech company,” said Gary Palmer, Payall founder and CEO. “We agree 100% with this thesis and believe regulated financial services businesses worldwide should be enabled with fintech capabilities to participate fully in cross-border payments and international money transfers-safely, securely and compliantly.”
Palmer added that the idea is to automate manual tasks that could have resulted in errors, and said the approach “eliminates the extensive costs and time financial institutions previously incurred and mitigates substantial risk in one of the most challenging areas of global banking.”
PYMNTS surveyed U.S. and U.K. firms recently and found that a majority of businesses had some interest in innovating payment methods for international workers, with 24.4% saying they were “very or extremely interested.” There was a high interest in cross-border payroll innovation.
Read more: 85% of UK-based International Firms Interested in X-Border Payroll Innovation
Thirty percent of U.S.-headquartered firms were likely to respond as such, and 58.7% said they were at least somewhat interested.
In U.K. businesses, there’s at least a mild level of interest in the cross-border innovations, per PYMNTS.
In other news related to cross-border pay, B2B cross-border pay firm Verto has partnered with multicurrency digital pay platform Xente, which works with African businesses.
See also: Verto and Xente Team Up on NGO Payments
The partnership will see more cross-border services going to Ugandan non-governmental organizations. Xente offers connectivity services so customers can pay verified beneficiaries, including in remote areas.