Payments fundraising has cooled from the 2020-21 era when large rounds priced on TPV multiples and the largest fintech valuations in the world were payments businesses. Capital today comes from a smaller set of fintech specialists and the growth and crossover investors still writing the larger cheques, and pricing anchors on net revenue, gross margin after scheme and acquiring costs and merchant durability. Infrastructure, vertical and B2B attract more interest than undifferentiated horizontal acquiring.

The investor mix is dominated by fintech specialists (Ribbit, QED, Bain Capital Ventures, Index) and the crossover growth funds that priced the larger payments rounds in the last cycle. The corporate VC arms of the networks and payments incumbents - Mastercard Foundry, Visa Ventures, American Express Ventures, alongside JPM Strategic Investments and Citi Ventures - are the most consistent strategic participants, and often pair capital with distribution. Flow has direct relationships across this base.

Flow has experience running VC fundraising processes for online payments companies across PSPs and gateways, acquiring and processing, B2B and cross-border payments, payment infrastructure and integrated payments for software platforms. Our extensive investor network spans early-stage seed funds, growth-stage investors, and strategic and corporate VC arms.