Digicel and Hartnett fund lead $6m funding round for swipe-free mobile payments app

Denis O'Brien's Digicel has joined Silicon Valley-based SVG in a $6 million investment in a swipe-free mobile payments app.

The funding round, for Flint Mobile, was officially announced yesterday at the New York City Street Fight Summit. Flint, based in Redwood, California, has developed a system that allows businesses that do not have traditional on-street shops to process payments using existing mobile phone technology.

The app allows smartphone cameras to scan credit or debit cards securely with no additional hardware required.

There have been numerous large investments in the mobile payments sector over the past year as venture capital companies look to cash in on what is seen as an area potentially worth billions of dollars.

This $6 million investment is a Series B round, led by Digicel and SVG and supported by Storm Ventures and True Ventures, which first invested in April 2012. SVG is a Silicon Valley-based investment group co-founded by John Hartnett of the Irish Technology Leadership Group.

'Next wave of solutions'
Flint co-founder and chief executive Greg Goldfarb said: "Our new funding partners position Flint well to drive the next wave of solutions designed to meet the needs of millions of service-centric, mobile small businesses.

“While many others in the industry are replacing retail POS [point of sale] systems and cash registers with tablet apps, we’re focused on empowering the ‘non-countertop’ businesses that operate outside of a store and have different requirements. As a result of strong demand for our unique approach, we’ve seen transaction volume grow by more than 10 times in under a year.”

Flint will charge 1.95 per cent on debit card transactions and 2.95 per cent on credit cards.

Digicel's Damian Blackburn will join the Flint board as part of the deal.

Flint’s app, first launched last year, offers customers a new way to process payments. Patented swipe-free technology allows secure card scans using a phone’s camera. A payment service provider engine offers merchant activation.