Link raises USD 30 mln to give merchants access to direct bank payments

Link claims to be one of the first companies in the US to enable customers to make online payments using their bank accounts. Since its founding, it’s attracted interest from investors including Valar Ventures, Tiger Global, Amplo, Pareto Holdings, Quiet Capital, and Shutterstock.

Merchants can build Link into their existing purchase flows, whether web- or app-based. Link also offers a Shopify app. Alternatively, merchants can accept payments via a Link-hosted checkout page using a ‘dynamic links’ feature to generate and share payment links with customers.

Link clients pay by bank transfer, sending funds directly from their bank to a merchant’s business account. Link guarantees the funds, taking on customers’ credit risk. An AI model tries to identify potentially fraudulent or risky transactions before they’re processed.

Solving pains in credit card payments

According to the company, people are addicted to credit cards — and it’s no wonder, given the lucrative rewards that many of them offer. But for merchants, credit cards tend to be less appealing. That’s because they’re on the hook for interchange fees, or transaction fees a merchant’s bank must pay whenever a customer uses a card to make a purchase. Some interchange fees can exceed 3%.

Link effectively combines the best of cards with the benefits of ACH via open banking. The company focused on building an enterprise-grade solution that is always available and works as expected every time so merchants can trust us with their payment processing. It offers various dashboards that allow merchants to easily monitor payment activity, generate reports and more. It also offers APIs for merchants that have specific needs to consume their transaction data in a certain way.

Link is promising a lot, including reduced chargebacks, reduced churn and coverage of roughly 95% of all bank accounts in the US Whether it delivers on all those fronts remains to be seen, but many merchants — who collectively paid USD 25 billion in fees last year — appear convinced. The company claims it already has ‘several billion’ in annual payment volume committed from brands including Misfits Market, Play By Point, Thrivos, and Passport Parking.

LinkPay is a complex product that involves interacting with multiple third-party services and managing the state of transactions. However, this complexity is hidden behind a simple software development kit, which is what’s important for merchants.