Over 4 million UK small businesses are reportedly unable to accept alternative payment methods besides Mastercard or Visa cards. Due to this, they must pay a commission fee to use these payment rails
A UK fintech Atoa Payments is building a viable alternative to cash payments for small businesses. By cutting costs, it has the potential to improve business cash flow significantly.
New Approach To Payments
Atoa Payments secured $2.2 million in seed funding from a recent development. The funds came from Leo Capital and Passion Capital, which opted to back Screenloop after partnering with Angel Capital Ventures. Also involved were angel investors like Matt Robinson, the founder of GoCardless and Nested. As part of his role asMarketFinance’s CEO, Anil Stocker also serves as an advisor to the company.
Atoa Payments plans to use extra funding to reduce their fees. This will help them expand and offer new payment options thanks to the investment.
Atoa Payments was co-founded by Sid Narayanan. The company’s goal is to provide better cash flow for UK merchants and break the monopoly of credit card payments. Sid stated that the partnership with strong investors like Atoa validates the company’s plans. Additionally, it’s important to note that at the time of writing, there has been a cost-of-living crisis and record inflation in the country.
Passion Capital, a company founded by Robert Dighero, Partner, announced that Atoa is a good fit for the UK market. The fintech startup has already made one successful first attempt at creating a new payment method. Atoa provides small and medium-sized businesses quick access to in-store payment options with open banking, which uses available financial data.
Shwetank Verma, a partner at Leo Capital, believes Atoa’s business model is a great opportunity for small and medium-sized merchants. Independent, small and medium merchants can level the playing field and benefit consumers; additionally, this business model has worked in SEA and India. Shwetank and Leo are excited to work with the Atoa team to help them build another successful business in a massive market.
Founded By Serial Entrepreneurs
Serial entrepreneurs Sid Narayanan, Arun Rajkumar and Cian O’Dowd founded Atoa Payments after founding KlearCard, a Singapore-based lender acquired by Validus last year. They chose to focus on the British merchant retail market because their first successful business inspired them to achieve greater success in their respective careers.
The company’s founders aim to become a mainstream small business friendly payment method that replaces payment cards. They announced the release of their product in June; it immediately saw over 100% monthly growth in terms of TPV and number of merchant customers.
Merchant Payments Made Simple
Atoa Payments makes setting up a merchant account seamless. The process takes less than 5 minutes and can be completed from within the Atoa app. Once connected, Atoa can be used through SMS, Pay-by Link or through a physical QR code on an Atoa app or stand. Atoa can also be connected to a merchant bank account for accepting payments via SMS, Pay-by Link or by displaying a QR code on their app.
Until now, merchants were hindered by the fact that paying their customers required them to download a separate app. Atoa solves this issue by allowing customers using a UK mobile banking app to pay securely.
A merchant supplies a linked or scanned QR code for customers to use without an additional app. After this, customers can use their mobile banking app to quickly process the payment. This means that the merchant receives funds immediately after the transaction is processed.
Atoa Instant Bank Pay Service
Atoa Payments uses instant bank pay, which implements an open banking system for improved customer service and efficiency.
By using Atoa Instant Bank Pay, small businesses can receive payments at a flat rate without incurring any cost. This can be up to 70% cheaper than alternatives such as SumUp, Zettle or Square. When paying with Atoa, businesses don’t have to wait 1-2 days for funds to appear in their bank accounts. Additionally, there’s no need for contracts or hardware fees. There’s also no risk of chargeback fraud because Atoa doesn’t require any contracts.
Although small businesses are limited in size, they often have to pay high costs due to contracts. These fees include hardware fees, PCI compliance fees and authorizations. $29 per month is the maximum cost for hardware fees.
