New VC firm Durable Capital follows Stripe, General Catalyst by investing in Rapyd

The cloud-based payment network Rapyd is adding the newly founded venture capital firm Durable Capital as one of its investors.

The investment by Durable Capital follows a Series C round which closed in September that raised $100 million from Stripe, Oak HC/FT, Tiger Global Management and General Catalyst. Terms of the Durable Capital investment were not disclosed.

“This funding from Durable Capital will help fuel us in achieving our vision to become the AWS [Amazon Web Services] of fintech," said Arik Shtilman, co-founder and CEO of Rapyd. "The investment by Durable brings our total funds raised to-date to $180 million. We will use these funds to recruit people and make an acquisition."

Shtilman noted that Rapyd is currently evaluating three different M&A targets, one each in the U.S., Latin America and Asia Pacific. The purpose of any such acquisition is to provide the company with additional geographic scale. Rapyd serves gig-economy firms such as marketplaces on a global scale, counting Uber as one of its customers.

The Rapyd financial services platform delivers several distinct functions through a single API. Its four main features include payment collection, disbursement, a white-labeled wallet and card issuance. Rapyd can collect funds from a wide variety of payment methods including cards, cash, bank transfers, domestic debit networks and local alternative payment methods (APMs) in over 105 countries. Similarly, for disbursement, it can send funds using several different methods including push to card, ACH, bank transfer and local APMs.

Currently Uber uses Rapyd in Latin America to collect funds from drivers where many Uber riders pay in cash. In heavy cash-based economies, companies such as Uber rely on partners such as Rapyd to enable last mile cash collection and then electronically transfer funds.

Based on data from Crunchbase, a website that tracks investments in private companies, Rapyd closed a Series B round in February raising $40 million from Target Global, Stripe, General Catalyst and IGNIA. Recently TechCrunch reported that Rapyd is close to a $1 billion valuation, which is commonly referred to as unicorn status.

General Catalyst is a heavyweight in the venture capital industry and also operates an incubator for fledgling startups. Its notable investment beyond Rapyd include firms such as Stripe, Airbnb, KAYAK, Deliveroo, Grammarly and Snapchat.

Durable Capital was founded by former T. Rowe Price employees, including star portfolio manager Henry Ellenbogen, to invest in small and mid-sized companies. Its other notable investment to-date was joining the Series D round for tech startup Convoy, a marketplace for shippers and truck drivers.