Payment infrastructure startup NORBr raises €2 million

Marking the fintech’s first institutional investor, Amsterdam-based fintech NORBr has raised €2 million via typically CEE-region-focused (and based) PortfoLion Capital Partners. 

While payment infrastructure providers are nothing short of, dare I say, common at this point, NORBr is seeking to differentiate itself from the pack through its promise of providing merchants with a no-code solution that offers the pinnacle of flexibility.

In a market with some 6,000 payment companies, each providing its own geographical coverage, payment methods, and services, payment managers are spoilt for choice but overwhelmed in the process.

The crux of the sifting here is that when it comes to purchasing payment services, the quality and reality of said vendor can only be assessed once the merchant has gone through market screening, legal contracting, compliance, and technical integration with the payment partner. Chicken vs. Egg.

“After twenty years in the payment industry, we thought about how difficult it is for large digital merchants to build a payment stack that stays agile over time and allows them to open and grow new markets without overloading their technical staff with complex IT projects that hurt their time-to-market,” explained NORBr CEO and founder Nabil Naimy. “So, we decided to create a smart abstraction layer that sits between the merchant and its partners (SCA providers, risk assessment engines, PSPs, etc.) and let payment managers rapidly activate new connections and workflows through our no-code web console.”

Launched in 2021, according to the startup they’ve built partnerships with a number of thirty payment providers including Cybersource, Axepta by BNP Paribas, Stripe, Volt, and Scalapay.

Noting that NORBr is the first fully Western European company Budapest-based PortfoLion Capital Partners has invested in, principal Márk Pálfalvi commented, “Efficiently managing payments between multiple parties and across different geographies has become so complex that some large companies now employ payment teams of more than 100 people. NORBr's payment infrastructure enables online merchants and marketplaces to fully outsource this complexity while gaining more control over their payment operations.”