Birmingham-based mobile payments startup Droplet has raised a £575,000 seed investment round from 328 people on Crowdcube for a 12.56% equity stake in the business.
Its investors include the government-backed London Co-Investment Fund, which gave £150,000, and a Norwich-based taxi driver who has been using Droplet since it launched in the city.
Droplet is a fee-free way of taking cashless payments, where users just need a smartphone to complete a transaction. The company only charges for additional bolt-on services used by merchants.
Droplet’s CEO and co-founder, Steffan Aquarone, said: “Droplet is founded on the belief that you can do payments differently, with absolutely no transaction fees for merchants or consumers.
“We are the only payments system in the world to take that approach and I think the attention and funding we’ve gathered on Crowdcube shows how much people like that idea. We’re now looking forward to using the funds raised to help further disrupt the payments industry – it certainly needs it.”
The company is already operating in Brighton, Cambridge, Exeter, Glasgow, Leeds, Norwich and Sheffield, with 12 more cities on the way, including London. They have signed up 600 merchants and 18,000 users, which means they’ve still got a way to go before they can claim to be mass market.
With this additional round, Droplet has now raised a total £1.4m.