In 2018 co-founders Yoyo Chang and Jack Howell set out to disrupt the way we take face-to-face payments. In their school cafeteria, the two were often faced with 25-minute queues for a 30-minute break, giving them as little as five minutes to eat. They soon found out that the core problem lay in payments: it was taking minutes per person just to pay for their food.

📣 Yoyo Chang: “It was time to change the way we paid for things face to face. E-commerce has loads of instant payment options, and looked fantastic. We simply thought, ‘why can’t this be the same for people in a physical shop or restaurant?’”

While initially a high-school project, the pair quickly realised that the same problem existed across the industry, and that accelerating payments for brick & mortar businesses would be a win-win for all involved: time and money saved; a simpler system for staff; and most importantly, happier customers.

Finding mentors, and The University of York

A year later, the duo organised a trial at the University of York (Yoyo’s alma mater) with huge success. Along the way, they met Chris Baker (Indigo, HP) and Hank Uberoi (Goldman Sachs, Earthport), each providing troves of their own business expertise to help Yoyo and Jack in solving their problem. Hank later became KodyPay's Chairman and both keep active roles with the company.

📣 Hank Uberoi: "Yoyo is an exceptional person and his thought processes are fast and forward-thinking - it is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I look forward to the continued growth of Kodypay under his leadership"

Investor backing, and building the team

Since early trials, KodyPay has seen a slew of successes and growth. The team have raised over $10m in financing over the last couple of years. With the right backing in place, hiring began. There are now ~30 full-time employees working as part of KodyPay. Each person brings years of expertise in their respective field, and takes forward a huge chunk of our mission to make payments faster for everybody.

We've gone on to expand our team into fully-independent functions, with recent hires including our CTO Joao Martins, ex-CTO of Yapily, and CPO Pierre Baigts, VP Product at SumUp. With an incredible team of experts, we've been able to successfully form partnerships with heavyweight organisations across the world to further our mission to make in-person payments faster.

Our work with the likes of Checkout.com and Adyen has enabled us to provide merchants with an experience never seen before, fully-integrating both e-commerce and in-person portions of the payment ecosystem to give these merchants the speed and flexibility that they deserve.

Changing payments in 2023

With venues live all over the UK, and a sales pipeline scaling at rapid pace, KodyPay's growth continues to blossom globally. Further product and service development means that 2023 will be an exciting year, with enhancements to the customer experience and additional benefits for merchants. We soon expect to mark the launch of KodyCard, the best way to access payouts instantly; along with opening up new products such as payment-integrated loyalty and embedded financial offerings.

KodyPay’s story has only just begun. The future of payments is here and KodyPay is at the core.