The venture capital arms of Alphabet Inc’s Google and Salesforce.com Inc are investing in UK payments start-up GoCardless, which has raised an additional US$75 million to fund expansion.
The financing is being led by Adams Street Partners, GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, GoCardless said in a statement.
Existing investors Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, Notion Capital and Passion Capital are also participating.
Valuation terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sky News first reported the interest from Salesforce.
GoCardless, founded in 2011, lets businesses set up recurring bank payments from customers online, rather than relying on a debit or credit cards.
It said it is processing US$10 billion in payments annually.
The company is betting that it can take a larger share of the US$2 trillion annual global payments market at a time when businesses are increasingly turning to subscription models.
Meanwhile, payment card networks such as Visa and Mastercard are reportedly planning to raise the fees they charge US merchants to process transactions.
About 18 percent of the world’s payments are recurring, GoCardless said.
“The way these payments are collected around the world is pretty broken,” GoCardless cofounder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi said in an interview.
GoCardless’ platform allows businesses to take direct debit payments from customers, whereas before companies would have had to use different procedures to set up payments in different geographies, or even between different banks in the same country, Takeuchi said.
The company, which employs 290 people, in the statement said that it would use the new money to open new offices across Europe, Asia, and North America.
Takeuchi said that the company, which has offices in the UK, France, Australia and Germany, would open a US location this year.
GoCardless also said that it would launch new features for customers, including the ability to process foreign-exchange transactions, instant settlement and using machine learning to increase transaction success rates.
Companies should be able to get paid by direct debit in their local currency, irrespective of where their customers are, and the foreign exchange feature would “launch soon,” Takeuchi said.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
RSS