Manchester-headquartered payments infrastructure provider Ryft has closed a £20 million Series B funding round, marking the largest payments Series B in the UK this year. Led by growth capital investor Gresham House Ventures, the round featured continued participation from existing backers Pembroke VCT and Ingenii Capital, alongside new backing from NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance via the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II.

The new funding brings Ryft’s total capital raised to approximately £27 million and directly supports the firm’s international expansion strategy across European and US markets. To facilitate seamless market entry across the continent, Ryft has formally submitted an application for a full European Union payments license with the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), enabling the firm to passport its services throughout the European Economic Area (EEA).

Unlocking Multi-Party Infrastructure for Modern Commerce

Founded in 2021 by Alex Mackenzie, Richard Kirby, and CEO Sadra Hosseini, Ryft builds specialized payment solutions tailored for marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and multi-location enterprise businesses. Modern platforms frequently struggle with legacy two-party payment rails that fail to handle complex, multi-party transaction flows efficiently.

Ryft’s FCA-regulated infrastructure resolves these technical bottlenecks through a single unified API integration. The platform automates complex operational processes, including:

• Automated Split Payments: Facilitating real-time, compliant multi-party payouts across complex merchant hierarchies.

• Streamlined Seller Onboarding: Automating KYC and compliance verification for multi-region platform merchants.

• Flexible Billing Workflows: Managing automated recurring subscriptions and multi-currency cross-border payouts.

• Merchant Monetization: Allowing platform operators to generate additional revenue streams directly from processed transactions.

Over the past 12 months, Ryft’s processing volume has tripled. More than 6,500 commercial clients now utilize the infrastructure, including high-growth brands and organizations such as Epos Now, Chaiwalla, Daytrip, Sprive, and the Disasters Emergency Committee.

National Sovereignty and the Shift to Agentic Commerce

The landmark raise arrives amid broader European efforts to establish sovereign payment infrastructure capable of challenging entrenched global incumbents.

“This round of investment means we can take what we’ve built in the UK into new European markets and compete on the global stage,” stated Sadra Hosseini, CEO and Co-Founder of Ryft. “Payments have been dominated by a small number of incumbents for a long time. We want to provide a powerful and efficient alternative to businesses, not just in Europe, but globally.”

The transaction also received strong endorsement from UK Government leadership, highlighting Manchester’s growing status as an international fintech hub.

“Ryft’s success is a vote of confidence in Manchester’s thriving fintech sector and shows how British businesses can start, scale and compete on the global stage,” commented Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby. “This Government is backing the industries and companies like Ryft that are creating jobs, attracting investment and driving good growth in every postcode.”

As digital commerce transitions toward instant platform payouts and automated AI agent transactions, owning underlying payment rails is increasingly recognized as a strategic economic imperative.

“Modern commerce runs on platforms, from marketplaces and franchises to creators and, in time, AI agents, but the payments foundation beneath it was built for a two-party world that no longer exists,” noted Rohit Mathur, Partner at Gresham House Ventures. “Ryft is the rare UK-built, FCA-regulated fintech designed for multi-party payments from the ground up… As commerce shifts to instant, multi-party platforms and increasingly agent-initiated payments, ownership of the infrastructure rails becomes a question of national economic sovereignty, not just merchant cost.”

“Splitting a payment cleanly between multiple parties is slow, technical, heavily regulated work, which is precisely why the incumbents left it half-served for a decade,” added Fred Ursell, Head of Investments at Pembroke Investment Managers. “This is the third time we have backed Ryft, and our largest investment in the company to date.”

Through strategic processing partnerships with major card networks and payment providers—including Global Payments, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Nuvei—Ryft is well-positioned to scale its multi-party payment engine globally.

The post Ryft Lands £20 Million Series B to Scale Multi-Party Payment Architecture Across Europe and the US appeared first on The Fintech Times.