Finix becomes a payments processor, heating up its competition with Stripe

News Summary

  • Payments infrastructure startup Finix has slowly been taking swipes at Stripe, first becoming a facilitator, and now becoming a processor.Finix said today it now is directly connected to all major U.S. card networks — American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa.
  • For the unacquainted, a processor is a company that connects directly into the major card networks for the purpose of transmitting payment transaction data and funds on behalf of a merchant.
  • In an unusual twist, Sequoia just one month later walked away from the deal in which it reportedly wrote the self-described payments infrastructure company a $21 million check.
  • Today, Finix says it processes “tens of billions of dollars for tens of thousands of merchants.”The “big four” payment processors that Serna referred to include Fiserv (First Data), JPMorgan Chase, FIS (Worldpay) and GPN/TSYS.
  • When you think about Stripe they’ve built really for speed, whereas we’ve built on Java, for scalability and for security,” he said.
  • A payment facilitator on the other hand has to work with a payments processor to move money.
Payments infrastructure startup Finixhas slowly been taking swipes at Stripe, first becoming a facilitator, and now becoming a processor.Finix said today it now is directly connected to all major [+4515 chars]