$20 billion Stripe is investing in a digital payments company that's aiming to be the Amazon Web Services of the fintech world

Rapyd

Arik Shtilman, cofounder and CEO of Rapyd.

• Fintech unicorn Stripe participated in a $40 million financing round for payments service company Rapyd.
• Rapyd aims to use the new cash to build what it calls "the world's largest local payments network." It's a critical component of its ambition to become the Amazon Web Services of the fintech world.

Stripe, one of Silicon Valley's hottest payment startups valued at $20 billion, is backing another payments company.

Rapyd, which offers a mobile-first financial network, said on Wednesday it had raised in $40 million in its Series B round led by Stripe and venture firm General Catalyst.

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The Mountain View, California-based company integrates different services, from bank transfers to digital wallets to ID verifications, through a single API. It also has built relationship with local payments providers to enable payments collection within a country and cross-border money transactions.

It aims to create a cloud service for payments to become the Amazon Web Services of the fintech world, serving merchants, gig economy workers and companies, other fintech firms, and even banks, said Arik Shtilman, cofounder and CEO of Rapyd. The company is aggregating payments providers to build what it called "the world's largest local payments network."

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Rapyd is not designed to compete against Stripe, Shtilman said. Rather, it serves 2.3 billion people who don't use credit cards in their daily life, but make payments via alternative payment methods, including cash payments, bank transfer, and mobile transfers.

With the new cash, Rapyd plans to increase its headcount to 150 people by the end of this year and expand its local payments network, Shtilman said. Right now, the company's platform offers payout services that span across more than 170 countries, and in over 65 currencies.

Shtilman wouldn't disclose Rapyd's current financials but said it's generated several tens of millions of dollars in revenue since the end of 2017.

The company had previously raised $20 million.

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