Mobile bill payment application Papaya has raised $50m from a Series B funding round headed by Bessemer Venture Partners.
The capital raise also saw investment from Sequoia Capital, Acrew Capital, Mucker Capital, 01 Advisors, Sound Ventures, F-Prime and Fika Ventures.
Founded in 2016, Papaya enables users to take a photo of any bill – such phone bills or parking tickets – with the company taking care of the rest. Papaya has built an AI-powered ‘bill understanding technology’ that can understand an invoice in the same way humans do.
The firm currently facilitates payments for hundreds of thousands of companies and organisations within the US.
According to Papaya, the new investment will be used to expand its team in order to keep pace with growing demand, forge new partnerships and continue building its technology.
Papaya CEO and co-founder Patrick Kann said, “The Papaya team and I are driven by our deep desire to build a business that can scale and have a massive, positive impact for the greatest number of people. American families’ greatest source of stress and anxiety is finances. With a user-friendly app and single photo of a bill, Papaya’s technology eases that pain point, which motivates us all.”
Bessemer partner Charles Birnbaum added, “Patrick and Jason have built the technology and assembled an extraordinary, mission-driven team to reshape the bill payment process and empower businesses and consumers to operate with a new level of efficiency and sophistication. We’re excited to support Papaya as they continue to build out their platform.”
