Open Banking: Kevin wants to initiate transfers from a physical POS terminal

The Lithuanian start-up Kevin provides an infrastructure enabling merchants to accept payments by credit transfer. It has just raised nearly $65 million to support the deployment of its solution, which now aims to tackle the acceptance of credit transfers on physical Eftpos terminals.

FACTS

• Kevin's solution enables account-to-account transfers to be initiated from a mobile application or website and, soon, from an EFTPOS terminal at a physical point of sale.

• Kevin has just completed a Series A financing round led by Accel with the participation of Eurazeo and existing investors, including OTB Ventures, Speedinvest, OpenOcean and Global Paytech Ventures. This round of funding comes six months after Kevin received nearly $10 million in investment.

• These funds have enabled Kevin to develop its A2A NFC payment solution, which enables transfers to be initiated from payment terminals installed at physical merchants. This solution should be operational in 2022.

• Kevin's goals are high: the FinTech plans to cover 35% of the payment terminal market in Europe by the end of this year, and more than 85% by the end of 2023. Kevin currently covers 6,000 merchants in 12 markets in Europe with its solution.

CHALLENGES

• Doing without cards to reduce the number of intermediaries: Kevin's raison d'être is to offer alternative solutions, adapted to physical commerce, in order to do without payment cards, which are considered costly and outdated. Founded in 2018, Kevin started by deploying its solution for online checkout, before turning to physical points of sale. Today, its value proposition lies in its simplicity, which ensures a better transformation rate for the merchant and lower costs.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• Worldline is reportedly working on a solution to accept credit transfer payments from a physical POS.

• Kevin says he has declined a number of takeover offers; for the sake of independence, the start-up does not work with payment players such as card networks or players like Stripe or Adyen, which are all potential acquirers for a company that relies on open banking to simplify payment and reduce costs.

• Since 2021, Kevin has been working with Decathlon and has implemented his solution in the company's stores in Lithuania and Latvia. Decathlon is said to have seen its transformation rate increase by 50% with a doubling of the number of validated payment transactions.