Mobile payment app also rolling out at London universities
Yoyo, a London-based mobile payment and loyalty app, has raised $5m (£2.96m) in seed funding.
The comapany is less than a year old and announced that it would be rolling its product out at the University of Westminster and University of Greenwich. They together serve over 50,000 students, visitors and faculty members across London.
The investment was led by Imperial Innovations Plc, with co-investments from Firestartr and Telefonica Group.
The European mobile transactions market is heating up. Last week, Swedish company iZettle raised €40m.
Simplifying till transactions
Yoyo was founded in 2013 by Alain Falys, Dave Nicholson, and Michael Rolph. The app simplifies and speeds up in-store transactions by combining payment and loyalty via one easy scan.
Users download Yoyo on the App Store or Google Play, and attach a funding method to top-up their account.
Yoyo integrates into the retailer’s till system and uses a unique QR-code for each transaction, which is scanned at the point of sale using a scanner.
Effectively combining cash and loyalty cards in one app, users collect points from the different retailers and receive promotions directly through the app.
Big first year
Imperial College London became the first UK university to support paying for goods on campus using a mobile app when they started using Yoyo earlier this year.
They also took part in the Pitch @ Palace event, taking home two out of three awards, ’Best Pitch’ and ‘Most Innovative Idea’.
This isn’t the end of a big year for the company. Co-founder and CEO, Alain Falys says:
We’re delighted to close this substantial seed funding round from investors who add huge value.
However, to fulfil our global ambitions we will raise a very significant Series A round of funding later this year.