The flourishing of online commerce in the days of the Corona has done wonders for many fintech companies operating in the field. One of them is the Israeli Rapyd, which today (Wednesday) announces a huge raising of $ 400 million in Round D consisting of $ 300 million in equity and an additional $ 100 million in Scandry, which were used to purchase shares of employees and managers in the company as well as shareholders’ holdings. And angels who invested in the company in its infancy.
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The raising was made at a valuation of $ 2.5 billion, a significant jump from the two acquisitions made by the company in 2019, the last of which was valued at $ 1 billion. “We made this recruitment after all the largest funds approached us, including attempts to acquire the company in huge sums. When a well-timed offer arrived, I realized I could get a higher value,” Eric Stillman, the company’s CEO and one of its founders, told Calcalist.
The fourth round of funding (D) was led by the Coatue Fund, which recently invested in a large number of well-known companies in Israel, such as Gong, Kaito Networks and others, and with the participation of a number of new investors, including Spark Capital, Avid Ventures, FJ Labs, Latitude. Most of the existing investors in the company also took part in the raising – among them: Oak FT Target Global, Tal Capital, Durable Capital, Enter Capital, General Catalyst, the American fintech company IGNIA and Stripe. The company has raised $ 260 million so far, before the current round.
Rapid has developed an international payment platform for businesses and consumers, which makes it possible to make bank transfers, transfers to digital wallets, cash payments and more. The company operates the largest online payment network of its kind in the world, which supports 65 types of currencies in more than 170 countries.
In a conversation with Calcalist, Stilman signals the future of the company and is not blinded by companies that currently want billions of dollars: “There is a lot of money in the capital market and investors are looking for good companies to invest large sums in. The future of companies like ours is an IPO. “We already have an option to make a direct offering or through Spock, but we want to grow at our own pace, which is more frantic and wild. As long as we can postpone the offering – which will be tens of billions of dollars – we will postpone it.”
Rapid is one of the most prominent players in the fintech industry today, including its involvement in the world of e-commerce. “Our market is on steroids right now. All the businesses in the world have moved online, a transition process that takes several years to e-commerce is now taking place within three months. One and a half year plans have been reduced to several months. The results of 2020 were our forecasts for 2022. “$ 20 million and $ 100 million in 2020. In 2021 we will double and maybe even triple our revenues at the very least,” says Stillman. “There are a lot of companies in our market that work with old technologies. We are a relatively young company with new technology and can bring in a customer to receive payments within minutes. Our main competitor is Stripe and we and they are leading the field.”
According to Stilman, the company will use the money to massively recruit employees and other acquisitions of companies. “40% of the money will go to two large acquisitions made in the coming year. After the very successful acquisition we made in 2020. The rest of the money will go to 100 programmers.” , said.
“We will soon launch new products based on our infrastructure, including logistics systems combined with partners. The combination of payments and logistics will allow business loans that will be less dependent on the major credit companies,” says Eric Stillman.
The company was founded in 2015 by Arik Stillman, Arkady Karpman and Omar Priel; Stillman founded ITNAVIGATOR, which was sold to AVAYA in 2013. At the end of 2015, the idea arose to build a new payment network, which would form a new infrastructure for conducting international transactions and meet the needs of e-commerce organizations and travel sharing, which depend on older technologies of traditional credit companies. Rapid has developed an international payment platform for businesses and consumers, which makes it possible to make bank transfers, transfers to digital wallets, cash payments and more. The company operates the largest online payment network of its kind in the world, which supports 65 types of currencies in more than 170 countries.
In April last year, Rapid acquired the companyClearing Icelandic Korta. Kurta is a first-hand exporter of Visa and MasterCard that clears $ 2.5 billion a year, with revenues of $ 40 million a year and is active throughout Europe.
Rapid was represented in the transaction by attorneys Shlomo Landers and Dan Fischer of Gornitzky & Co.