Exclusive: Payments API provider Payabli raises $8M

Payabli, a payments infrastructure firm focused on vertical SaaS platforms, raised $8 million in new funding, the company tells Ryan exclusively.

Why it's the BFD: Vertical SaaS companies are increasingly becoming payments companies and need better technology to make payments a revenue driver.

Driving the news: The Miami-based payments startup raised a seed extension from established investors TTV Capital, Fika Ventures and Bling Capital.

Between the lines: Payabli co-founders William Corbera and Joseph Elias Phillips worked on both sides of the payments problem SaaS platforms face.

• Corbera founded an early fintech startup called RevoPay, which grew to provide multiple payment options for over 40,000 merchants before being acquired by OSG Billing Services, an Aquiline Capital-backed payments firm.

Meanwhile: Phillips worked in sales for companies like Seamless and ServiceTitan. At ServiceTitan, Corbera advised the company on updating its payments infrastructure.

• "We were looking for ways to accelerate our revenue growth ... and we stumbled upon payments," Phillips says. "We were doing billions of dollars in volume, but we weren't really monetizing it well."

How it works: Payabli works with developers at vertically focused SaaS platforms — think companies like Toast or ServiceTitan — that are increasingly becoming payment processors.

• "We started Payabli as an API-first payment infrastructure ecosystem to help software companies become payment companies and monetize their money movement," Corbera says.

• The company embeds payment acceptance, issuance and operations through a unified API, reducing the need to manage multiple vendors and payment processors.
• Unlike legacy payment providers that take a fee for transactions, Payabli offers a revenue share with its SaaS customers, allowing them to gain revenue from payments processed.

Of note: The new funding follows $4 million in seed funding it raised last May.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the round of financing as a seed extension and to clarify Corbera's work with ServiceTitan.