Founded in 2022, Atoa is an emerging payment processing platform for individuals and small businesses. Atoa is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Based on the UK's Open Banking system, Atoa provides small businesses a seamless way to accept in-store and online payments. Atoa is being preferred by small businesses in the UK, as charges are less than Visa and Mastercard payments. Moreover, there is no need to buy any POS machine or to pay rental for the same. Businesses can get payments credited instantly with Atoa, as compared to card payments that can take 1-2 days.
Atoa is also emerging as a preferred payment option for individuals, as users don't need to worry about carrying cards. Atoa has a dedicated app for making payments. However, people can also use the app of their respective banks to make the payment. Aloa supports transactions of most of the leading banks such as Barclays, Bank of Scotland, Lloyds bank, Monzo, NatWest, Revolut, Starlink Bank, Santander, TSB, HSBC and Halifax.
History
Quite a few startups have an interesting story about how it all began. Atoa founders have something similar to share. Having lived in Singapore, the founders were used to alternative payment options via mobile apps. However, things were quite different in the UK, where card payments dominated the scene. Card payments were great for consumers, but not so good for small businesses.
The primary complaint was the transaction fee of around 1.5% to 2% charged by Visa and Mastercard. Due to the transaction fee, many small businesses in the UK insisted on cash payments. The founders experienced the same, when their barber started insisting on cash payment or bank transfer. The founders were quite surprised that such a situation existed in modern times. It eventually prompted them to launch Atoa, as an alternative to card payments.
Atoa charges just around 0.6% per transaction, which is significantly less than the fee charged on card payments. Businesses with higher monthly volumes are charged even less by Atoa at around 0.3%. With significant benefits across the ecosystem, Atoa registrations have been growing at around 100% every month since launch.
Funding
Atoa has received investment worth $2.2 million since its launch in 2022. The pre-seed round witnessed the participation of Leo Capital and Passion Capital. Angel investors include Moon Capital Ventures and Matt Robinson, co-founder of GoCardless and Nested.
Acquisitions
Atoa has not made any acquisitions till date.
Competitors
Atoa competes with the likes of Kroo, Zettle and Square. Of course, the bigger targets are Visa and Mastercard.
About the Founders
Atoa was founded by Sid Narayanan, Cian O'Dowd and Arun Rajkumar. Sid currently works as the CEO at Atoa. He had earlier worked with companies like Boston Consulting Group (BCG), KlearCard, Greyloft and Standard Chartered Bank.
Co-founder Cian O'Dowd currently serves as the COO at Atoa. He had earlier worked with Adyen, KlearCard, Digicel Group and RedBarrel. Co-founder Arun Rajkumar currently works as the CTO at Atoa. He had earlier worked with Signzy, KlearCard, Wooqer and TechJini.
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