This piece posted in TechCrunch describes a funding round and basic business approach for the French 2021 startup Numeral, which is based in Paris. The firm provides a payment automation API designed for modern financial institutions, digital firms, and businesses. Numeral received a €13 million funding round last month, which it plans to use for increased staffing and connectivity to French and other EU banks going forward.
‘The best way to describe Numeral is by describing what it isn’t. Numeral isn’t an open banking aggregator for consumer apps. It doesn’t compete with Tink, TrueLayer or Yapily….Numeral isn’t a banking-as-a-service provider either. The company doesn’t offer bank accounts, doesn’t generate IBANs and doesn’t issue cards….“We are a payment automation platform for tech companies,” co-founder and CEO Édouard Mandon told me. “We let tech companies connect to their bank account to automate payment operations.”
As many readers will know, PSD2 has been live across the EU for more than one year, so many retail APIs have been created and deployed. However, corporate and fintech connectivity to banks has always been a bit more complicated. Numeral attempts to make that interaction much easier, enabling fintechs to more readily interact with bank accounts via an API. The company expects to expand services to include workflow and orchestration, incorporating potential multiple bank relationships.
‘Once the integration is done, Numeral customers can integrate payment capabilities and features in their apps. The startup also offers a web app for non-technical staff. This way, they can reconcile payments and accounts without having to use the legacy web app offered by corporate banks….Numeral can then add some additional features on top of its API. For instance, you can imagine setting up an approval workflow, a notification system, etc.’
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
