Global payment issuance infrastructure startup CARD91 has raised $13 million in a Pre-Series A funding round from Infinity Ventures, Point72 Ventures, and Sabre Partners.
The round saw participation from Emphasis Ventures (EMVC), Commerce Ventures, and high-profile Fintech Angel Investors.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup was founded in Aug 2020 by Serial entrepreneurs Vineet Saxena, Ajay Pandey, and Kush Srivastava, CARD91 builds a plug-and-play payment issuance infrastructure to help businesses and banks launch co-branded cards and simplify business payments.
Speaking on the fundraising, the founders of CARD91 said,”Having marquee investors back us strengthens our belief in the product. The funding raised will be used to expand our issuance product offerings and reach multiple businesses across India and to start our foray internationally. It will also help in building our team strength and capabilities, and launch related ancillary products.”
“Digitisation across industries has accelerated over the past two years, and payments is no exception. We believe the next 100 million users in India will be accessing credit via cards issued by brands and businesses. Launching card programs is a difficult process since it involves integrating with multiple players. Our goal is to simplify this process for businesses by providing a plug-and-play solution,” they claimed.
“CARD91 has created a payments infrastructure that simplifies the card issuance process for start-ups, businesses and banks alike,” said Jeremy Jonker, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Infinity Ventures.
“We are very excited to back CARD91 as we are seeing that the entire complex value chain of payments is up for disruption. The transformative potentialities of modern card issuing are immense as businesses and customers are demanding new experiences. We have strong belief in the exemplary founding team of CARD91 to realize that vision for the Company”, said, Rajiv Maliwal, Managing Partner of Sabre Partners.
CARD91 customers are in the lending sector, agritech, edtech, fintech ventures who intend to launch their own card programs for their customers.
Prior to this round, in 2020 the startup had raised seed funding from EMVC, Rainmatter Capital, Blume Founders Fund, Inflection Point Ventures, and marquee angel investors in the Indian tech ecosystem.
