Payfone, a US-based mobile payment service provider, has added $19m from a consortium including credit card company American Express (Amex) as the largest investor and Rogers Communications’ corporate venturing unit in its first disclosed deal.
Rogers has been setting up its venture operation, Rogers Ventures, with a team led by Greg Tarr in Toronto, Canada, and Palo Alto in California.
As part of its funding, Amex and Payfone have signed a strategic alliance to create a global mobile checkout service. As part of the agreement, Payfone will combine its mobile authorization and payment services with American Express’ recently-launched digital payments platform, Serve.
Dan Schulman, group president of enterprise growth at Amex, said: "The alliance is an important next step for the international roll out of Serve. We look forward to working with Payfone as we evolve the Serve platform to provide the most advanced payment solutions for buyers and sellers."
Alongside Amex and Rogers in the round were phone operator Verizon’s Investments unit (assisted by corporate venturing operation Verizon Ventures), phone maker Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Partners Fund and venture capital firms Opus Capital and RRE Ventures.
In August, Payfone raised $11m in its series B round, including from corporate venturing fund BlackBerry Partners.
The company previously raised $1.6m, according to news provider PEHub.com.
RRE Ventures incubated Payfone in March 2008.