Payment solutions company Twid raises $12 million in series A funding from Rakuten Capital, Google and others

• Twid, a payment solution platform, has raised $12 million in a series A funding round led by Rakuten Capital.
• The round also saw participation from Google, ICMG Partners, JAFCO Asia, January Capital and many more.
• The company will use the funds to build its merchant and issuer network and hire new talent.

Bangalore-based payment solutions platform Twid on Wednesday said it had secured $12 million in a series-A funding round that was led by Rakuten Capital and also had Google Investing.

The round also saw participation from ICMG Partners, JAFCO Asia, January Capital and Reddy Futures Fund along with existing investors BEENEXT and Sequoia India's Surge.

The company intends to use the funds to scale up and build its merchant and issuer network, expand product roll-outs, build tech capabilities – primarily in data science, and hire new talent.

With this funding round, Rakuten India CEO Sunil Gopinath will join Twid’s board of directors on behalf of Rakuten Capital – Rakuten Group’s corporate venture capital arm.

“Twid is on a mission to revolutionise how rewards are viewed, understood and used across platforms by creating a completely new network. We are bringing together various industry stakeholders, nudging them towards a cashless ecosystem and future,” said Amit Koshal, co-founder and CEO of Twid.

Founded in 2020 by Koshal, Rishi Batra, and Amit Sharma, Twid provides a platform that combines multiple loyalty/reward points of users across issuers such as banks, fintech firms, retail or e-commerce brands, and allows consumers to pay at offline and online stores using their reward points.

According to the Q1 2022 Global Loyalty Programs survey, the loyalty programmes market in India is expected to grow by 12.6% on an annual basis to reach almost $143 billion in 2022.

In India, loyalty and reward programmes have been used by brands and organizations – especially in the hospitality, tourism, aviation and retail sectors – as a strategy to broaden and deepen their customer base .

Twid claims to have over 40 million registered users, and over 50,000 live merchants. It also has a payment network of banks, brands, payment gateways, merchants and customers.

“By enabling reward points to be ubiquitous and fungible, we are witnessing very high customer delight. Customers are able to stay updated with their points and are able to save, earn and pay every time when using ‘Pay with Rewards’. This reaffirms our approach to delivering long-term value to merchants, issuers and customers,” Koshal added.

‘Pay with rewards’ is Twid’s payment option that enables buyers to use their reward points as payment at the time of purchase.

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