Papaya, a mobile bill payment app that simplifies bill payments for consumers, announced that it has secured $50 million via a Series B round.
Papaya’s investment round has been led by Bessemer Venture Partners along with contributions from Sequoia Capital, Acrew Capital, 01 Advisors, Mucker Capital, Fika Ventures, F-Prime, and Sound Ventures.
Papaya allows users to take a photo of any bill – ranging from parking tickets to utilities and phone bills, to medical invoices – and the company “instantly takes care of the rest, able to reach every single business in the United States that issues bills.”
The announcement also mentioned that Papaya has “built a one-of-a-kind, artificial intelligence-powered ‘bill understanding technology’ which can understand an invoice in the very same way that humans do.”
By reducing payment friction caused by paying bills via the mail, over the phone, or on complicated web portals, Papaya’s platform “helps reduce everyday Americans’ bill pay stress by making it easy to pay any bill with their mobile device.”
The update further noted that it “helps businesses of all sizes in all industries, as well as governments and municipalities, get paid faster and more often.”
Patrick Kann, Co-founder and CEO of Papaya, stated:
“The Papaya team and I are driven by our deep desire to build a business that can scale and have a massive, positive impact for the greatest number of people. American families’ greatest source of stress and anxiety is finances. With a user-friendly app and single photo of a bill, Papaya’s technology eases that pain point, which motivates us all.”
Papaya currently facilitates payments “for hundreds of thousands of businesses and organizations in the U.S.” Beyond the mobile app, Papaya “integrates with partners’ billing processes through embedded widget technologies and paper statements,” the update noted.
Charles Birnbaum, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, added:
“Patrick and Jason have built the technology and assembled an extraordinary, mission-driven team to reshape the bill payment process and empower businesses and consumers to operate with a new level of efficiency and sophistication.”
Kann, with experience in banking and stints at the World Bank and IdeaLab, co-founded Papaya with computer vision scientist and CTO Jason Meltzer.
Meltzer worked at iRobot, “where he led development for the computer vision technology behind the Roomba.” The announcement further noted that new investment will be “used to expand its team to keep pace with increasing demand, to forge additional partnerships, and to continue building its industry-changing technology.”
