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Why We Invested in PromisePay

We are excited to announce the close of our latest investment in PromisePay!

We had a chance to get to know the PromisePay team over the last year, as the company took part in the SixThirty Fintech accelerator, which operates out of T-Rex (and happens to be our neighbors). PromisePay’s Simon Lee, Darren McMurtrie, and Simon Jones are from Australia and came to SixThirty to leverage all the incredible financial services networking and connections that the program offers.

During the program, PromisePay impressed us with its technology—essentially, they had developed an escrow service that allowed individuals to pay each other and hold the money until both parties agreed to release it. During the course of the program, the team realized the product was perfect for marketplaces, and so they changed their focus. Since that time, the company has also added an express pay option, enabling customers to pay immediately on marketplace sites with credit card or PayPal. We were excited to see the team land its first customer, Flippa, a web domain sales platform. Since the original launch on Flippa, PromisePay has had incredible traction—easily validating the need and the technology.

The benefit of PromisePay going through the SixThirty program, from Cultivation’s standpoint, is that we got to know the company very well and can watch it grow over the three-month course of the program. Accelerators, like SixThirty, have become an invaluable source of deal flow for us for that reason. The more we saw of Promise Pay, the more we liked. And as it turns out, the more the team saw of St. Louis, the more they realized how valuable the connections and entrepreneurial community could be in helping their business grow. So when it came time to discuss a potential investment, we were excited to hear Promise Pay wanted to open its North American office in St. Louis.

It has been a pleasure getting to know the team during the months we spent in due diligence on PromisePay. We are looking forward to having them in St. Louis as they work to grow a customer service and fraud division here. We also look forward to helping them sync up with US-based marketplaces who can benefit from Promise Pay’s escrow and express pay products. We are also excited to have them in the same time zone! Welcome to the Cultivation Capital family, PromisePay!