HelpPay, a payments disruptor of recent vintage with a “social impact” mission is on the hunt for capital.
The fintech this week opened expressions of interest for an upcoming crowd-funding on the Birchal platform.
Founded in 2021, the company is setting out to disrupt billing and receivables management, as well as the more pedestrian art of helping out family and friends that may be short (or worse) – for instance by chipping in to pay their electricity bill.
“Our platform enables helping by giving vulnerable customer segments the simplest possible way to share their bills with their family, friends and support networks,” the company says.
In small steps, HelpPay has sealed agreements with half a dozen energy companies to promote its service, for which it may earn a merchant services fee.
“What we are seeing is, when those companies tell their customers about HelpPay’s services, our platform explodes,” Rowan Wilde, chief commercial officer told Banking Day.
As recently as a few weeks ago, the company began to roll out its software-as-a-service offer to all manner of enterprises.
This affords “access to to an API, so the biller can add individual HelpPay links on every bill,” Wilde said.
This initiative is “supercharging sales” Wilde said, and the calibre of leads is intriguing and impressive.
“We are in discussions with four very large [utility] providers and three of the big four banks.”
The interest from banks highlights one dimension of the payments flows the fintech is seeing this year.
Since August last year, payments to help out with credit card bills is up 50 per cent.
Help with mortgage payments is up 45 per cent.
The fintech has around 5000 active users at present, though the total number of users since its founding will be a major multiple of this.
How many?
“That’s a fantastic question,” Rowan said, going on to concede they don’t know.
Seed-funded by the founders and with one family and friends capital raise under its belt, HelpPay isn’t saying how much it aims to raise.
An offer document will be ready in three weeks’ time.