[Funding alert] Fintech startup PayGlocal raises $4.9M from Sequoia Capital India

Payment solutions startup PayGlocal on Thursday said it has raised $4.9 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital, along with investors such as BeeNext, Jitendra Gupta, and Amrish Rau.

The startup said it will use the funds to scale its cross border merchant payments solution and expand the team.

Founded in 2021 by ex-Visa executives Prachi Dharani, Rohit Sukhija, and Yogesh Lokhande, PayGlocal enables merchants to accept and collect payments from customers residing outside India in the currency of their choice and using their own credit and debit cards.

"Indian merchants are facing challenges in accepting payments from an exponentially growing global consumer base as the current payment solutions aren’t exactly designed to process their payments made via cards issued abroad," said Prachi in a press release.

"We knew that we had a huge opportunity to unlock cross-border growth for nearly every business owner out there if we could address this problem. So, we put together our years of experience working in the Indian financial ecosystem to develop PayGlocal," she added.

The startup has partnered with private and public sector banks to accept international payments. It said it aims to increase its team size by at least 50 percent by March 2022.

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Currently, PayGlocal accepts payments in over 100 currencies.

"Moving money across borders is still broken, especially if one of the endpoints is an emerging market such as India. We believe that Prachi, Rohit, and Yogesh are a great team attempting this problem given their past experience in payment processing," said Ashish Agrawal, Managing Director at Sequoia India.

India is among the largest global market for inward remittance flow at around $83 billion, a report from PwC said, followed by China and Mexico. Since 2016, India's cross-border remittances have been growing at a CAGR of 8 percent, driven mainly by an increase in demand for Indian goods and services, international travel and a large workforce in foreign countries.

Fintechs have been creating innovative products to enable easier and safer cross-border payments. Open Financial Tech, a blockchain-based cross-border payment system was recently selected as part of the second cohort of the RBI's regulatory sandbox.