[Finance Magnates] Skipify Receives Strategic Investment Led by PayPal Ventures

Originally posted on Finance Magnates

By Nicholas Otieno

• Skipify received the funding to help it expand its business.
• The e-commerce marketing platform aims to reduce friction in the buying process.

Skipify, an 'instant checkout' platform for marketing channels and merchant websites, announced on Thursday that it obtained a strategic investment round from investors that include PayPal Ventures, Synchrony, Amex Ventures and Okta Ventures.

The amount of the investment was undisclosed. Skipify mentioned that the funding was in addition to a recent Series A round co-led by Point72 Ventures and Flourish Ventures.

Skipify, a California based AI-Powered  payments  firm, lets merchants/businesses offer instant checkouts on their app, websites and  marketing  channels.

With the help of investors and strategic partners, Skipify disclosed that it intends to unlock frictionless commerce for tens of millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of shoppers in the years to come.

Specifically, Skipify said that it plans to use the new funds raised to enhance its core product and infrastructure to help merchants improve their shopper's checkout experience. In addition, the company stated that it will use the funding to hire aggressively for its product and engineering teams.

Ryth Martin, the Founder and CEO of Skipify, stated: “The shift in consumer behavior from laptops to mobile devices has triggered the shift from typing into tapping. However, the standard checkout process online still remains dependent on nearly 2 minutes of typing from shoppers. Skipify fixes that.”

Meanwhile, Michael Bopp, the EVP and Chief Growth Officer at Synchrony, also commented: “Our partnership with Skipify helps deepen our long-term strategy to create innovative point of sale solutions, in this case by adjusting to new shopping habits and consumer behaviors we're seeing in the market.”

Providing Frictionless E-commerce for Businesses

Launched in 2018, Skipify is striving to develop a frictionless commerce experience for brands and shoppers and provide a secure omnichannel payments network. The platform enables shoppers to rapidly buy products across text, email, social, affiliate, display and web channels.

In December last year, Synchrony, a major consumer financial services firm, made an investment into Skipify in order to transform digital commerce. The investment enabled Skipify to commercialize its capabilities across Synchrony's merchant network and financial ecosystem.

The collaboration allows Synchrony's merchants to use Skipify’s checkout solution to provide consumers with the ability to complete their purchase with Synchrony-issued credit cards in one tap and automatically apply for any applicable card rewards and discounts. Merchants who use Skipify's solutions have seen a 30% increase in sales conversions, Synchrony said.

In late 2020, Google partnered with Skipify in order to offer enhanced shopping features within the Gmail ecosystem. The partnership enables Gmail users to view products in real-time and checkout with a shopping cart without leaving the email space. Merchants, who used the shoppable email program, are reported to have witnessed revenue from email rose 30% or more.