David Avgi’s new payments startup UNIPaaS raises $10 million seed round

After selling SafeCharge for $890 million, Avgi’s new company is tackling payments for Digital Marketplaces and B2B enterprises

Meir Orbach 14:0009.02.21
Two years after he sold his company SafeCharge to Canada-based Nuevi for $890 million, Israeli entrepreneur David Avgi is launching a new startup called UNIPaas. It intends to use the funds to build out its solution for multi-vendor businesses to offer their own payment experience to manage and control funds, and leverage payments and financial services to generate new growth engines.

 

The new payments solution provider for digital marketplaces and B2B SaaS companies has raised a $10 million seed round led by TPY Capital with participation from global fintech leaders including Sarah Friar (CEO of NextDoor and formerly CFO of Square); Eric Sager (COO of Plaid); Sam Hodges, CEO of Vouch Insurance and formerly President of Funding Circle; and prolific product leader and angel investor Gokul Rajaram. Additional investors include FJ Labs, the world’s leading fund in marketplaces investments as well as serial entrepreneurs Talmon Marco (H2Pro; Juno; Viber); Boaz Palgi and Erez Webman (Paramount Data; ScaleIO); and Ofer Smadari (StackPulse; Luminate).

 

 

David Avgi. Photo: PR David Avgi. Photo: PR

The new company, which was founded in 2020 by Avgi, who serves as its CEO, Oded Kovach (CTO) and Limor Liberman (COO), develops a solution designed for Digital Marketplaces and B2B SaaS platforms to offer their own payment experience. Since its inception, UNIPaaS has obtained the cards scheme PCI Level 1 certification, received the UK FCA Authorised Payment Institute license, and started onboarding customers.

 

 

“We are transforming how businesses integrate and handle payments,” Avgi said. “The experience gained in over twenty years in the payments industry has led the UNIPaaS team to tackle what we believe is one of the most acute issues facing B2B platforms, especially multi-vendor ones. Digital marketplaces and B2B platforms wish to own their payment experience without the burden of developing additional tech stacks and operations or deal with regulation and licensing.”

 

“We were struck by UNIPaaS vision and how big the market it addresses can be,” said Dekel Persi, General Partner at TPY Capital, who, with Guy Yamen, joined the UNIPaaS Board. “We were also impressed by David Avgi’s ability to recruit top talent as well as with the progress this team has made before raising any external capital. David’s people-driven leadership and significant personal investment in the round made it obvious to us as a fund that we have found a leader with a rare combination of vision, commitment, and execution skills.”