The FinTech start-up led by 20-Year-old Co-Founder and CEO, Yao-Yun (Yoyo) Chang, has raised a £1.8 million seed round.
KodyPay is a new mobile point of sale app and payment aggregator. Its technology allows users to pay for goods in-store without queueing: making shopping a prompt and effortless process. As an Omni-commerce driven platform, KodyPay revolutionises the way we shop safely in a post-COVID society. Its contact-free process can achieve significant savings for both businesses and customers. By removing bulk hardware such as tills and printers, transaction fees can be reduced. Best of all, customers save time without the need to queue. Customers can choose to use e-wallets, pay-later providers, or simply use card payments. They can also collect reward points to donate to a charity of their choice, giving back to the less fortunate.
KodyPay aids business needs by allowing them to create their own in-store checkout experience as part of our electronic point-of-sale system. A highlight of EPOS is the ability for it to reduce environmental waste. We crucially aim to reduce all waste: waste of time, money, paper, unnecessary contact. Working under this ethos can help to improve both customer and merchant experience in the retail and hospitality sphere.
At only 20 years old, CEO Yoyo Chang co-founded KodyPay in the final year of High School. Hoping to build a career in investment banking, Chang had started to invest in the stock market at the age of 13. With returns of over 80% in Q4 2016, he led his school team to first place in a national investment competition. However, in 2018, Chang first made a foray into the payments industry by self-investing £120,000 to start up KodyPay. Chang is currently working alongside co-founder Jack Howell whilst studying at the University of York.
KodyPay has successfully raised £1.8 million. Leading the financial round was Cognition Foundry and Hank Uberoi, alongside a group of high profile private investors. These include former members of senior management from Legal and General, Verifone and HP.
Post financing, KodyPay warmly welcomes Hank Uberoi, who joins the Board as Chairman. Previously, Uberoi was a partner at Goldman Sachs and the COO at Citadel Investment Group LLC. Most recently, he was the CEO/Executive Chairman/Director at various points in the growth of cross-border payments firm Earthport. Commenting on his new role, Uberoi said:
“I am very impressed with Yoyo and the KodyPay team and what they are building; this will be an exciting journey!”
By working with IBM partners TES Enterprise Solutions and Cognition Foundry, the platform will be running on the IBM Z Systems. The company has also entered into a partnership with Cybersource, a Visa Solution. With their support, KodyPay has built a wholly modular payment stack. This will allow merchants to work with their preferred payment methods far more efficiently.
“Our partnership with Cybersource, a Visa Solution, will allow us to create a positive shift in a very traditional industry. We are a young team, and we want to help look after our world. To remove the need for hardware such as payment tills, card machines and paper receipts is a step towards that goal. We aim to help merchants to reduce their own carbon footprint. This environmentally conscious message will be particularly appealing to the younger generation as we pave the way for our future.”
Cognition Foundry partners with IBM to help start-ups turn their visions into reality using highly secure, highly scalable enterprise-class technologies. With a team having decades of experience Cognition Foundry, aware that low cost and speed to market are crucial to bringing new ideas to fruition, offer entrepreneurs a full range of support from initial ideation, through architecture/design, application development, deployment and hosting. Cognition Foundry has a strong focus on projects that are aimed at addressing environmental issues and improving the lives of all people, especially the disadvantaged.
KodyPay is a new mobile point of sale platform and payment aggregator, enabling businesses to perform all the necessary actions to carry out a standard electronic transaction and accept a multitude of different payment methods using a web and app-based technology platform.
The University of York is a world-class institution with a wide range of support made available for student entrepreneurs delivered through its departments, Centre for Careers and Placements and the Research and Enterprise Directorate. Alongside helping them with funding, personal development and networking, the University also has incubator space supporting students and recent alum to develop their business ideas and build the skills and confidence for starting up their own businesses.
KodyPay Ltd (trading as Kody) is a limited company registered in England and Wales with company registration number 11532575, whose registered address is: Unit 42 24-28 St Leonard Road, Windsor, Berkshire, England, SL4 3BB. KodyPay® is a registered trademark of KodyPay Ltd in the United Kingdom. The KodyPay Card or “KodyCard” is issued by Checkout Ltd or Adyen N.V, each pursuant to license from Mastercard International Inc. Mastercard® and the circles design are registered trademarks of Mastercard International Incorporated.
Kody partners with Checkout Ltd and Adyen N.V. to provide financial services, payment services and banking services (including cross-border services in the EEA). Checkout Ltd is licenced by the UK Financial Conduct Authority as an authorised electronic money institution under number 900816, as listed on the FCA Register. Adyen N.V. (member of the European Central Bank, licensed as Credit Institution by De Nederlandsche Bank) is registered in the Netherlands as company number 34259528. Dutch law defines a bank as a credit institution as referred to in Article 4 of the CRR. The CRR defines a credit institution as an undertaking the business of which is (i) to take deposits or other repayable funds from the public and (ii) to grant credits for its own account.
