Fintech

Percent reigns in $5M on journey to become the ‘Stripe of Donations’

Four-year-old developer will expand API services in to US

Companies worldwide will advertise a “greater good” approach, but they will often lack the funding, sourcing or even tech needed for built-in donation software advances. UK-based Percent has been looking to close that gap.

The near four-year-old business announced Wednesday a healthy $5 million venture round led by Morpheus Ventures that will allow the company to expand itself into the U.S. and even further within its current territory of the UK and Australia.

The tech itself is fairly familiar with Percent utilizing an application programming interface (API) to complete its task. The catch though is the API then allows users to donate to good causes and charities, matching donations made when a payment is fulfilled or rounding up the transaction itself.

According to the company website, its API-first platform takes care of auditing and compliance processes as preventatives to fraud and money-laundering, all while parsing tax-efficient disbursements of funds into over 200 countries worldwide. As of late, Percent can disburse funds to approximately 5.7 million nonprofits all over the globe.

“Percent was founded to become the global API-first infrastructure behind all giving,” said Henry Ludlam, founder and CEO of Percent. “This will be the foundation for a better, fairer future of capitalism in which every financial transaction has social and environmental good built into it.”

Ludlam even mentioned the possibility of its integration in to streaming services in an interview with TechCrunch. At the end of a film or show a user could make a donation to a nonprofit if they feel so inclined to that directly correlates with what they watched, Ludlam said.

According to the interview, a crypto platform is even in the works.

So where does the “Stripe of donations” context come into play?

Like Percent, the Irish-American financial services and software creator also uses API for e-commerce website and mobile applications. Founded in 2009, Stripe has expanded its services to anti-fraud protections, invoicing and point-of-sale connectivity.

So far, the tech is extremely well-liked. Since 2015 the company has been pulling in over $100 million venture series rounds left and right. Its also working with clients like Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft and a slew of other major players.

Percent has a similar schematic — utilize the API mechanics but this time to compile funds for a greater good, while seemingly holding companies accountable at the same time.

“With the events of the last several years, it has become more apparent that aligning brands with purpose is driving consumer behavior and spend. However, today, the process of donating to nonprofits is incredibly archaic, manual and inefficient,” said Kristian Blaszczynski, managing partner of Morpheus Ventures.

The Percent API-first platform abstracts away all of these complexities and automates the processes, allowing businesses to align closer to their stakeholders and focus on their core business,” Blaszczynski said.

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