Irish-headquartered payment platform CleverCards announces €8m funding round
View original article at Business Post
CleverCards, the Irish-headquartered payments platform that aims to become the “Netflix of payments”, has announced an €8 million funding round, led by Pluxee, a global employee benefits firm.
The partnership with Pluxee will now be leveraged to gain access to their “extensive network, industry experience and resources”, according to the company.
Existing investors have also contributed with this latest investment bringing the total capital raised by the firm to €28 million.
This latest round of funding would help to accelerate its market reach and platform development, it said.
A team from Interpath Advisory, led by Liam Booth and James Gibson, along with a team from Wallace Corporate Counsel, led by Sean Wallace, advised CleverCards on on the fundraising.
Kealon Lennon, chief executive and founder of the company, said that Pluxee’s investment was a “significant endorsement of our vision and strategy”.
“Their belief in our potential to innovate and connect the digital economy across borders is energising,” he added.
The CleverCards platform enables businesses to e-mail digital Mastercards to their employees which they can use online or anywhere in the world, or in-store using Apple or Google Pay. They are the only Irish company providing tax-free digital Mastercards.
Since launching in 2023, CleverCards has experienced substantial growth, with more than 10,000 businesses now on board and 350,000 users across 92 countries.
Its goal is to create the “world’s most advanced digital payments platform”, and this was inspired by Lennon’s trade trip to China in 2019.
“Everyone in China uses their mobile to pay. It didn’t take that much vision to see what way the market in Europe and the US will evolve, but it needed someone to take the lead – and that’s what I did,” Lennon said last year to the Business Post.
On top of the funding round, CleverCards has also expanded its board of directors with five new appointees, who it said had “vast experience” in scaling payments technology.
Those non-executive appointees are: Patrick Waldron, previously the chief executive of Planet, Dónal Daly, an experienced banker and investor, Marc Frappier, previously the managing partner of Eurazeo Capital, Garry Lyons, previously the chief executive of Orbiscom and Viktoria Otero del Val, Pluxee’s chief strategy officer.