SSV SmartPay Raises £5M at £30M Valuation to Scale Its Open Banking QR Payment Platform

April 17, 2025

SSV SmartPay, a London-based payments technology company, has raised £5 million in a funding round that valued the business at over £30 million. The capital will be used to expand the company's merchant network, enhance product capabilities, and strengthen the balance sheet as SSV SmartPay pursues its strategy of becoming a leading open banking payments platform for UK merchants and consumers. The company was founded in 2024 and is headquartered in Canary Wharf, London. CEO Ankur Ghosh described the overwhelming investor support as reflecting recognition of the company's potential to disrupt the payments landscape.

The UK payments market is undergoing structural change driven by the maturity of open banking infrastructure. The UK's Faster Payments network and Open Banking framework enable direct account-to-account transfers authorised by the payer via their own banking app — bypassing the card networks entirely and eliminating the interchange and scheme fees that typically cost merchants between 1.5% and 3.5% of the transaction value. Open banking adoption has been accelerating: in July 2025, the UK recorded over two billion API calls leveraging open banking infrastructure, and the total value of open banking payments reached £29.9 million that month, up nearly 9% month-on-month. For merchants — particularly the 5.5 million UK SMEs who have historically had little leverage over card processing fees — this represents a meaningful opportunity to reduce costs without sacrificing payment speed or security.

SSV SmartPay has built a multi-channel open banking payment platform that enables merchants to accept payments via QR codes (in-store or on-screen), SMS payment links, WhatsApp payment requests, and ecommerce integrations. Customers initiate payment by scanning a QR code or tapping a link, which opens a payment request in their own banking app for biometric authorisation — the payment then settles directly between bank accounts via Faster Payments, with no card details shared and no intermediary holding funds. For merchants, the platform reduces transaction fees to 0.5%, compared to the 1.5–3.5% typical of card payments, and provides same-day settlement rather than the 1–4 business day delays common with card processing. The company is also integrating loyalty and cashback schemes to drive consumer adoption.

The platform requires no specialist hardware: merchants can accept payments via a smartphone app, a printed QR code, or an online checkout integration. This low-friction setup has made SSV SmartPay particularly relevant for sole traders and small businesses, who can register and begin accepting payments in under two minutes. The company is regulated by working with FCA-authorised payment institutions, providing access to the open banking infrastructure without the requirement for merchants to hold their own payment licences.

The £5M raise follows an earlier crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube, where SSV SmartPay raised £1M from retail investors under EIS qualification, building a broad investor base aligned with the company's growth trajectory. The new institutional funding round brings total capital raised to approximately $7.4M. SSV SmartPay is positioned as a direct competitor to other open banking payment platforms including Atoa and Trilo, in a market where rapid merchant network growth is the key determinant of long-term positioning.

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