GoCardless, a direct bank payment solution provider, has secured a $312 million Series G funding round, making it the latest European and UK tech unicorn at a valuation of $2.1 billion.
GoCardless joins unicorn club
The investment was led by Permira, whose other high-profile investments include Klarna, Clearwater Analytics and Carta. New investor BlackRock Private Equity Partners also participated.
With the round, Michael Rouse, former chief commercial officer at Klarna, will join the paytech’s board of directors. Koen Köppen, chief technology officer at Klarna and board member of Mollie, will join as an independent director.
GoCardless says it will use the money to grow its “footprint in the open banking space through both product and geographical expansion”.
For example, it plans to enable both recurring and one-time payments and open its “Bank Pay” network to other payment service providers.
GoCardless was founded in 2011. It currently processes more than $25 billion in transactions per year and serves over 70,000 businesses around the world, including DocuSign, Klarna, TripAdvisor and Epson.
Since its last funding round in December 2020, the company’s valuation has more than doubled, and its headcount has grown by 85%.
Klarna recently selected GoCardless to offer bank debit payments to its over 21 million customers in the US.
GoCardless also signed a strategic agreement to become a direct debit partner for PayPal – giving PayPal enterprise merchants the ability to offer their customers additional bank payment options.
