PPRO raises $180 million and is now valued at $1 billion

The global payments firm PPRO has raised $180 million in a new round, valuing the company at over $1 billion.

The latest round includes two new investors, Eurazeo Growth and Wellington Management, as well as one returning shareholder, Sprints Capital. This round comes just six months after PPRO raised $50 million from Sprints Capital, HPE Growth and Citi Ventures (Citigroup’s venture capital unit based in San Francisco). The new funds will be used to continue PPRO’s global expansion and support the development of new cross-border payment technology and services.

“I am very proud of what the PPRO team has accomplished,” said Simon Black, CEO of PPRO, in a press release. “Beyond securing the support of such prestigious investors and achieving a milestone valuation, we’ve enabled our customers to grow at record numbers during what has been a tough time for many. By giving businesses the ability to offer payment choice, we’ve helped give people around the world better access to goods and services that improve their lives.”

London-based PPRO has carved out a niche in the payments industry in delivering retailers access to foreign customers across the globe by allowing consumers to be able to pay for goods and services, not only in using the local currency but by allowing them to also use their preferred alternate payment method.

For example, YapStone, an online provider of marketplaces for vacation rentals, partnered with PPRO to be able to help it provide alternatives to the various marketplaces serviced by YapStone. This allows YapStone customers to be able to access dozens of alternative methods from around the world, including iDEAL (Netherlands) and SOFORT (Germany). This effort is critical to YapStone's geographic growth since in many countries, consumers may not own or want to use a credit card, preferring instead to use a bank transfer method, direct debit, or other payment method.

As companies expand into geographic regions that once largely used cash but have transitioned to methods such as Alipay in China or Paytm in India and not to traditional Visa and Mastercard payment cards, PPRO’s services represent the only way to access these new prospects.

PPRO has been aggressive in expanding its offerings to provide its clients with local payment capabilities. In 2019, PPRO acquired Latin America local payments specialist allpago rather than embark on an IT project. It also announced a partnership earlier that same year with Mexican convenience store chain OXXO, the largest in Latin America with more than 18,000 locations, to enable consumers to be able to pay for e-commerce purchases using cash at OXXO’s stores.

In 2020, PPRO processed over $11 billion for its customers and services over 100 e-commerce markets worldwide. PPRO has raised over $230 million in five funding rounds, based on data from Crunchbase, a website that tracks investments in private companies.

The importance of PPRO’s services comes at a time when not only cash usage is on the decline as global markets increasingly adopt digital shopping, but also as consumers have become increasingly reluctant to use cash for fear of transmission of the coronavirus. As reported in McKinsey’s 2020 Global Payments Report, adoption of non-cash payment methods has been accelerating in a number of major countries worldwide.

Probably the most notable change in the last decade has occurred in China, where almost all transactions were conducted in cash in 2010. Cash now represents just 41% of transactions, following the broad adoption of mobile payment methods such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, along with the expansion of the domestic debit network powered by UnionPay.