Fintech · São Paulo
Payform
Payments infrastructure inside vertical software.
- Stage
- Series A
- Founded
- Founded 2021
- First invested
- We invested 2022
- Team
- 25 people
- Total raised
- $18M
- Current stage
- Series A
- Team
- 25
- Founded
- 2021
What they build
The product, in plain terms
Payform builds payments infrastructure inside vertical software. The company started in São Paulo in 2021. We backed it at seed and have worked with the team through Series A.
- 01
Ledger infrastructure a finance team can reconcile without exporting anything to a spreadsheet.
- 02
Direct connections to the banks and processors that matter in each market, maintained in house rather than resold.
- 03
Controls, audit trails, and approvals designed with a controller in the room, not bolted on after the first enterprise deal.
Where it stands
Numbers the team watches
Reported by the company at its most recent board meeting. We publish what founders are comfortable publishing and nothing more.
- Annualised volume
- $10M
- Reconciliation accuracy
- 84%
- Median settlement
- 3 weeks
Why we invested
The note from the first meeting
“We met Payform in 2022, back when the product had to be correct before it was impressive, which slowed everyone else down. Two other firms passed in the same month. We thought they were solving for the wrong risk, and we were happy to be alone on the cap table for a while.”
- Reached default-alive economics before raising a priced round.
- Hired its founding engineering team out of the alumni network.
- Went from prototype to paid pilot in a single quarter.
Founders
Who is building it
Both founders were in the room the day we wrote the check, and both still run the company.
Kofi Diallo
Co-founder and CEO
Started out consulting for the buyers this product now serves.
Katya Marek
Co-founder and CTO
Wrote the migration tooling twice, once badly, and still talks about the first one.
Timeline
How it has gone
The version we would give another investor, including the years where nothing looked like progress.
- 2021
Founded
Kofi Diallo and Katya Marek start Payform in São Paulo around a single wedge: payments infrastructure inside vertical software.
- 2022
We invested
We wrote the seed check. Amara Okafor has worked with the team ever since.
- 2023
Paid customers
Contracts replaced pilots, and the company stopped selling a roadmap and started selling a product.
- 2024
Series A round
Raised at $110M, led by an investor we introduced during diligence. We took our full pro rata.
- 2026
Where it stands
25 people, selling in more markets than it started in, still run by the two people who wrote the first version.
Alongside us
Co-investors
We share rounds with people we would want on our own cap table.
- Costanoa
- Craft Ventures
- Boldstart
- Lux Capital
Working here
Open roles
Payform is hiring in these areas. Mention us and the note gets to the founders directly.
- Bank partnerships
- Payments engineering
- Compliance
Building something next to Payform?
We are usually early to a category and happy to be early again. Send us the short version.