Looking to expand beyond its current role in providing compliant digital payment options for legal cannabis businesses, AeroPay has caught the attention of fintech investors.
In closing a seed funding round this week led by Continental Investors, Chicago-based AeroPay did not disclose the amount of money invested but said the funding will help it scale operations throughout the U.S. for account-to-account payments in all industries.
Continental's investment portfolio includes e-commerce marketplace Drizly, publicly traded tech company Sezzle, online payments provider WePay (acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2017), and mobile payments platform LevelUp (acquired by GrubHub in 2018).
Other investors in the round included previous and new investors from the Chicago tech community and financial services industry.
"We built our platform to simplify the payments process for owners and operators in all industries and verticals," Daniel Muller, CEO and founder of AeroPay, said in a Tuesday press release. "We're extremely excited about the group of investors we've brought on, specifically the team at Continental Investors, as their expertise aligns perfectly with the type of company we've set out to create."
AeroPay says its platform diminishes traditional payment processing burdens, including costs, settlement times, and security issues. It works by enabling seamless bank-to-bank digital payments between businesses and their customers. The platform is built to work in any environment, in person or online.
"We have a guiding conviction that payments remain an underinvested and under-innovated category in C2B and B2B commerce," Paul M. Purcell, partner of Continental Investors, said in the release. "For nearly 15 years, Continental has successfully invested and partnered with entrepreneurs pushing innovation in and around financial services and commerce."
After launching the digital payments solutions for state legal cannabis businesses in July, Aeropay announced in September a partnership with Safe Harbor Private Banking (a division of Partner Colorado Credit Union), the leading compliance-based banking program for cannabis businesses.
