UK FinTech Lands $3.4M to Help SMBs Turn Smartphones Into POS Terminals

For small and medium-sized businesses in emerging markets that can’t afford card point-of-sale (POS) hardware, U.K.-based FinTech Nomod couldn’t have come at a better time.

The platform makes it easy for merchants to accept card payments on their phones with no extra hardware. Since its launch in March 2021, it has seen its total processed volume grow 11.5x, while onboarding close to 4,500 merchants across the U.S., the U.K., Bangladesh and in the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The company, which was part of U.S. tech startup accelerator Y Combinator’s summer 2021 batch, recently announced it has raised a $3.4 million seed round at a $50 million valuation to further accelerate its expansion plans.

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Apart from Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital and other venture capital funds, such as Kingsway Capital and Goodwater Capital, participated in the round, together with a number of angel investors from the Valley, including a co-founder of the Dubai-based, Uber-owned ride-hailing company Careem.

“A merchant today can install Nomod, sign up in three or four minutes and start processing in-person and online payments using payment links,” Omar Kassim, the company’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “Our thesis is that card acceptance is a fairly homogenous action. Whether you’re doing it in Australia or India, it doesn’t really matter. We feel like we can do a lot of markets in parallel, and today, we allow merchants to sign up from 44 different countries to use our platform.”

See also: Cards-as-a-Service Tackle MENA’s Market Fragmentation

Once Nomod is downloaded on their phones, merchant clients can process in-person payments from their customers, with payments in the U.S., the U.K. and the UAE settled in their local currencies — dollars, pounds and dirhams, respectively.

In other markets like Nigeria and South Africa, where there is currency volatility, Nomod applies some foreign exchange cost — but intends to expand its platform to begin acquiring and settling those merchants in their local currencies.

Customers can pay with different cards like Visa or Mastercard, or can use a contactless payment method payment via near-field communication (NFC) and QR codes.

The company plans to expand its merchant offering to include access to cards and accounts, as well as local payment networks and lending.

“There isn’t a dominant mobile software solution for payments globally at the moment. So I almost feel like there’s an opportunity for us to build a WhatsApp or Telegram equivalent for payment acceptance or face to face, as well as with things like payment links and subscriptions,” Kassim added.

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This is not the first time the founder has been successful in the entrepreneurial world. Prior to Nomod, Kassim founded the UAE-based eCommerce and online marketplace website JadoPado, which was acquired by Noon, an Amazon competitor in the MENA region, back in 2017.