Percent, the fintech innovator with the mission to put good into everyday financial transactions, has closed a USD5 million venture round led by Morpheus Ventures. This strategic investment is being used to expand Percent’s Purpose-as-a-Service offering to commerce, big-tech and fintech markets in the US, building on its existing presence in the UK and Australia.
Nationwide Building Society is a co-investor in the round, building on its original investment in Percent early in the start-up’s journey. Such has been the building society’s belief in Percent and it’s offering since its previous investment, it also became a Percent customer in the UK in 2020.
Percent makes it easy for companies to build giving and purpose into their business. It provides digital giving infrastructure for firms to create unique donation experiences for their customers, enabling fast and efficient donations to millions of nonprofits on their behalf. The APIs allow businesses to build new ways for their customers and users to support the causes they care about, examples include contributing a fixed percentage of what a customer spends, matching a donation made when making a payment, or rounding up a financial transaction.
Founded in 2017, Percent’s growth has been buoyed by consumers’ increased demand to support companies that align with their views. Research from Kantar found only 22 per cent could name a brand they thought was doing a good job addressing the issues they care about, with climate change, plastic waste, and water pollution topping the list of concerns. This was in stark contrast to the 95 per cent of businesses who thought purpose is at the heart of what they do.
Businesses are increasingly prioritising the integration of purpose into their digital offering, but face a number of barriers:
Building the required software from the ground up is inefficient and expensive when it is not the company’s core activity
Connecting with, verifying and continually auditing the wide range of good causes people care about is time-intensive
Processing donations is fraught with legal complications, compliance and regulatory risk
Percent provides the most efficient solution to these challenges. Its API-first platform was developed to seamlessly navigate the complex auditing and compliance processes designed to prevent fraud and money-laundering whilst ensuring tax-efficient disbursements of funds into 200 countries worldwide.
Its API provides instant access to an ever-expanding catalogue of verified non-profits, allowing businesses to easily integrate giving into their digital products. More than 7 million non-profit causes around the world have been added to Percent’s Purpose Platform, which carefully vets and validates an organisation’s legitimacy.
Customers have ranged from Fortune 100 companies to a wide variety of start-ups – ride-sharing app Turo, sustainability startup Zero Waste Club and open banking Tomato Pay – all of whom have used Percent to build deeper connections with customers by helping to support the causes they care about.
Henry Ludlam, Founder and CEO of Percent, says: “Percent was founded to become the global API-first infrastructure behind all giving. 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. The pandemic has accelerated a shift into the Decade of Purpose, in which people flock to like-minded brands who will help them create a better world. We enable that shift at a fraction of the cost, empowering companies to meet the demands of these new-look consumers. This latest round of investment to expand our work internationally shows that this message is resonating with businesses, their customers and nonprofits all over the world. It’s time to change capitalism for good.”
Kristian Blaszczynski, Managing Partner of Morpheus Ventures, says: “With the events of the last several years, it has become more apparent th
