Online merchants that sell across borders run into a plumbing problem. Each country favors its own cards, wallets and bank transfers, and every new market can mean another integration project for the engineering team.
Easy Payment Gateway set out to solve that with a single connection. In July 2017 the company closed a funding round led by Alejandro Betancourt López and Andreas Mihalovits, an earlier investor who increased his stake, according to Baker Tilly and SBC News.
What Easy Payment Gateway Sells
Founded in 2014, the company built a platform that “brings together more than 200 international solutions in a single, simple and easy-to-use interface,” Baker Tilly reported. It also bundled fraud tools, and it operated from Spain, the United Kingdom and Gibraltar. SBC News noted that Alejandro Betancourt López had most recently put money into fashion through the sunglasses company Hawkers, making payments a fresh sector for him.
Founder Alex Capurro described the pitch to merchants as speed. The service “is the ideal option to start selling quickly and easily in new markets,” he said, because it groups the most popular payment methods in each country and lets shoppers pay in local currency. SBC News listed BetVictor and Nektan among its clients at the time, and the startup said it aimed to become the main payment provider for online betting operators.
The 2017 Round Alejandro Betancourt López Co-Led
Baker Tilly put the round at €6 million, while SBC News reported £5.5 million split into two parts, an initial £2 million followed by £3.5 million once early targets were met. Earlier backers included Optimizer Invest, a Swedish fund with an office in Marbella, along with Wix.com founder Avishai Abrahami. Across four rounds, the company had raised a total of €11 million.
The money had specific jobs. Easy Payment Gateway planned to hire engineers, strengthen sales teams in London and Madrid, open offices in Malta and Israel and look at the U.S. market, and it expected turnover of €1 million by the end of 2017. Jose Manuel Peral, its chief operating officer, said the funds would “drive growth in the markets we are currently active” while the company tested expansion into Israel and the Middle East.
O’Hara Administration, the family office led by Alejandro Betancourt López, also spoke for the investors. Gonzalo Guzman, its chief financial officer, told SBC News that the team behind the company had “both the experience and know how required to reach our goals.” Mihalovits said he had been impressed by “the superb growth rates.”
Alejandro Betancourt later listed the payments company among the deals that followed his first private equity bet on technology, naming it alongside Auro, Hawkers and BDK during a 2022 interview.