Finix’s $75M Series C: A Note from Our CEO

Over the last few years, we’ve been heads down and hard at work, reimagining payments from the ground up.

Last May, we announced that we officially became a 'full-stack acquirer processor.' So what exactly is a 'processor?'

Very simply, a processor is a company that connects directly into the major card networks for the purpose of transmitting payment transaction data and funds on behalf of a merchant.

The key here is that only a true ‘processor’ maintains a direct integration into the proprietary card network systems. Only a select few companies are allowed to connect into these systems. It requires tens of millions of dollars in R&D, high upfront integration fees, costly insurance policies, minimum card volume thresholds, numerous compliance certifications, and more.

The dirty little secret of the payments industry is that most payment providers are built on top of one or more of these processors, and therefore only as good as the underlying processor’s infrastructure they are built on top of. It’s also incredibly hard to believe, but today around 80% of the entire U.S. merchant processing market is still held by just four legacy processors—all of which were built in the ‘90s. To put that in historical perspective, these payment giants were built for a pre-internet, pre-e-commerce world, leaving businesses—whether they handle in-person (card-present) or online (card-not-present) transactions—struggling with outdated, fragmented solutions that fail to meet modern demands.

Worse, these legacy players, in their attempts to 'catch up,' have introduced patchwork fixes through M&A that have caused significant issues like failed data models, resulting in millions of dollars going unreconciled. The oligopoly controlled by the legacy processors presents a number of very real shortcomings. The table below highlights some of the challenges we’ve seen with the legacy processors:

After a decade of experiencing these pains firsthand, Finix made the major, multi-year strategic investment to become an acquirer processor, with direct connections to all of the major card networks.

Roman Leal, Managing Partner at Leap Global and former Goldman Sachs Payment Equity Analyst and former PayPal Strategist, explains:

“Finix made a gutsy, but highly strategic call to pivot towards a full-fledged payment processor. The team knew that this move was highly complex, required a lot of upfront investment and would put them in direct competition with large, well-capitalized incumbents. That move paid off. This places Finix in an elite category of cloud-native payment processors, which includes companies like Stripe, Adyen and Braintree (acquired by PayPal).”

Along our company journey, we recognized a tremendous headwind delaying customer implementations—a massive shortage of engineering resources.

We’ve always been a major proponent of the developer-friendly approach to payments, and we still are—in fact, I still contribute to the Finix API Committee which meticulously reviews each and every API design. However, over time, we started to recognize two emerging trends by talking to our customers:

1. Non-developer centric companies The vast majority of businesses actually have no developers. Therefore, the developer-first perspective largely ignores the needs of businesses without dedicated engineering teams.

2. Scarce engineering talent Every company—from small businesses and startups to larger corporations—has limited engineering resources. The last thing they want to do is dedicate their engineering resources to their payments experience.

These should seem like obvious challenges given the ruthless competition for engineering talent, but oftentimes these types of customer pain points get drowned out in the Silicon Valley echo chamber. 

If Stripe is building for developer-centric startups, Square for micro-merchants, and Adyen for multinational enterprises, Finix is building for the 22M businesses without development teams that still want leading payment technology to better serve their customer needs. Today, over 60% of our customers utilize our no-code tools.

Finix’s suite of payment solutions supports the entire spectrum of customer preferences—allowing them to pick and choose what to build vs. outsource—enabling both experienced developers and those with little to no technical experience to get up and running in hours.

Today, Finix is driving a rapidly evolving payments landscape, leading the way with our:

• No-code/low-code capabilities that make managing and embedding payments simple and intuitive, enabling businesses of all sizes—even those without developers—to streamline payment operations, unlock revenue streams, and more.

• Omnichannel support for both card-present and card-not-present transactions, addressing the needs of businesses across retail, e-commerce, software platforms, and more, with seamless integration across channels.

• Multinational capabilities that allow businesses to operate seamlessly across borders, handling complex, cross-currency payments with ease.

• Real-time payouts to enable faster, more efficient payment processing and settlements, ensuring businesses can manage cash flow and transactions in real-time.

Finix’s evolution into a full-stack acquirer/processor, combined with its suite of no-code/low-code solutions and features, is delivering exactly what today’s businesses need: a flexible, future-proof payments solution that’s built for growth. Finix’s momentum—and Series C milestone—speaks to the effectiveness of our approach and the growing demand for our solutions.

Thank you to our customers, our investors, our partners, and most importantly our Finixians who got us here and will continue to drive us forward.