JustiFi, a Minneapolis-based fintech platform aimed at vertical SaaS companies, has announced a $6.6 million seed round. The round was co-led by Emergence Capital (an early investor in Zoom, Salesforce, and others) and Rally Ventures (early investors in SportsEngine, Carbon Black, Braze, and others). JustiFi says the funds will be used to “scale the team and continue to build out the product.”
“Fintech is complex and payment teams are expensive and hard to secure, especially with other priorities like customer acquisition and new product features fighting for resources,” Joe Keeley, co-founder and CEO of JustiFi, said in a release. “JustiFi’s payment team and platform tools enable platforms to integrate fintech strategies early in their build without having to hire huge teams to support them.”
JustiFi uses AI to analyze business transactions to “dynamically optimize and reduce payment fees the lowest possible effective rate at the interchange level.” The company says the platform gets “smarter” over time to increase profitability.
“To put it bluntly, we know that nearly every business in the world pays too much in payment processing fees. Those high fees are especially painful to vertical SaaS platforms, where gross margin is materially impacted by each basis point,” Justin Kaufenberg, managing director at Rally Ventures, said in the release. “Offering payments is table stakes. Vertical SaaS platforms should not settle for anything less than a fully integrated, fully white label, comprehensive fintech stack that includes a native orchestration layer and transaction level cost optimization.”
To learn more about JustiFi and the seed round, read the release below.
Minneapolis, MN | JustiFi, the intelligent fintech orchestration platform for platforms, today announced its $6.6 million seed round. JustiFi provides vertical SaaS platforms with a full suite of embedded fintech tools that can be deployed to their current customer base.
As vertical SaaS platforms increasingly become the system of record in their industry, customers look to them for expanded capabilities, including payment and banking tools. Unfortunately most vertical SaaS platforms do not have the in-house expertise or engineering bandwidth to develop a fully embedded fintech suite of tools, and they typically end up deploying an amalgamation of integrations that are not optimized for customer happiness or maximum revenue.
When a vertical SaaS platform partners with JustiFi, they instantly have a fully integrated and white labeled suite of payment acceptance tools, multi-payment type intelligent orchestration tools, white label insurance capabilities, lending capabilities, card issuing, treasury management and more. These tools are optimized for lowest possible cost, resulting in highest possible revenue and profit.
As the global internet economy reached upwards of $6.49 trillion in 2020, businesses paid more than $195B in payment processing fees alone. Using AI, JustiFi’s decision engine analyzes every transaction to dynamically optimize and reduce payment fees to the lowest possible effective rate at the interchange level. Over time, JustiFi becomes smarter by applying its learnings, thus continuing to increase the profitability of the business.
The round was co-led by Emergence Capital, the early investor in Zoom, Bill.com, Veeva, Salesforce and other industry-leading enterprise companies, and Rally Ventures, early investors in Braze, Carbon Black, Coupa and SportsEngine. The new financing will be used to scale the team and continue to build out the product.
“JustiFi was created to democratize fintech and accelerate the revenue potential of SaaS platforms,” said Joe Floyd, general partner at Emergence Capital. “JustiFi was built by vertical SaaS veterans who won at the payments game before. Now, they’re commercializing all of the industry leading insights, data, tools and technology they’ve developed over the last 15 years, so other platforms can win as well.”
“Fintech is complex and payment teams are expensive and hard to secure, especially with other priorities like customer acquisition and new product features fighting for resources,” said Joe Keeley, co-founder and CEO of JustiFi and founder and former CEO of CNST (acquired by Bright Horizons, NYSE:BFAM). “JustiFi’s payment team and platform tools enable platforms to integrate fintech strategies early in their build without having to hire huge teams to support them.”
“To put it bluntly, we know that nearly every business in the world pays too much in payment processing fees. Those high fees are especially painful to vertical SaaS platforms, where gross margin is materially impacted by each basis point,” said Justin Kaufenberg, managing director at Rally Ventures and co-founder and former CEO of SportsEngine, a vertical SaaS platform that processed multiple billions per year in payments. “Offering payments is table stakes. Vertical SaaS platforms should not settle for anything less than a fully integrated, fully white label, comprehensive fintech stack that includes a native orchestration layer and transaction level cost optimization.”
About JustiFi
JustiFi is the embedded fintech platform built for vertical SaaS platforms. The company’s AI and machine-learning engine manages and optimizes payment transactions to help platforms reduce fees and maximize profits. JustiFi leverages 50+ years of industry experience and expertise to add value for customers by generating payments revenue, saving money, ensuring compliance and turning payment processing into a strategic advantage. For more information, visit justifi.ai.
