Former Google Wallet Chief Lands $100 Million for Startup Poynt

(Bloomberg) -- Poynt Co., a startup that competes with Square Inc., said it raised $100 million to take a bigger chunk out of the multitrillion-dollar payments market.

The company plans to use the new money to expand into markets in Asia, Europe and South America, as well as increase hiring. Investors in the round included Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, and National Australia Bank Ltd. Previous backers include GV, the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc., and Matrix Partners.

Poynt was founded by Osama Bedier, the former head of Google Wallet and a digital-payments veteran. The Palo Alto, California-based firm makes payment terminals for merchants. But its main goal is to build an operating system that runs any payment terminal, and supports quick software updates and applications written by outside developers. That's similar to how Google's Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS operating systems improved phones.

“iOS and Android transformed a ubiquitous utility into a platform for innovation where developers could build once and distribute everywhere,” Bedier said in statement. “Our vision is to transform retail by becoming that innovation platform for payment terminals.”

The startup said it has shipped close to 150,000 terminals in the last 16 months and total payment volume is expected to exceed $25 billion over the next year. Poynt has partnerships with banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., and about 8,000 developers have created apps on its operating system.

To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Verhage in New York at jverhage2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Andrew Pollack

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