UK’s Fidel Raises $18M To Bring Card-Linked Payment APIs To US Developers

U.K. FinTech startup Fidel has raised $18 million in Series A funding co-led by U.S.-based Nyca Partners and QED Investors, as reported on Wednesday (Sept. 25).

Also participating in the funding round are Citi Ventures, Commerce VC, Elefund, Horizons Ventures, RBC Ventures Inc. (a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada) and 500 Startups.

Angel investors Cris Conde, former CEO of SunGard, and Taavet Hinrikus, founder of TransferWise, also participated.

Founded in 2013 in London, this first round of funding will support Fidel’s ambitions to grow internationally and hire more talent.

Fidel offers a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allows developers to build capabilities – like rewards, for example – on the payment networks of major credit cards.

The company has partnered with Mastercard, Visa and American Express, offering a series of APIs that link a user’s payment card to an app.

“Card-linking is the optimal choice for any user journey that relies upon real-time payment information, location accuracy and frictionless customer experience,” he said. This includes loyalty, digital receipts, PFM/expense management and “online-to-offline attribution,” Fidel Co-founder and CEO Subrata Dev told the news outlet.

Fidel takes on regulatory compliance by tokenizing card numbers. “All of this helps businesses get to market and scale faster,” Dev said.

“Fidel’s vision to make cards programmable will transform the way financial services are delivered to consumers. Highly personalized experiences can now be delivered in real time. The company drives value for the card networks, issuers, merchants and, most importantly, consumers,” Yusuf Ozdalga, partner at QED Investors, said in a press release.

Industry players have continued to ramp up their integration efforts, embracing API technology to not only make a payment digital, but also to embed that transactional process directly within other back-office processes for buyers and suppliers. APIs are also important in B2B commerce, particularly when it comes to syncing corporate buyers’ and suppliers’ systems so everyone is on the same page from procurement to payment.