Bill payment app Papaya secures $50m in Series B round

US-based bill payments app Papaya has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Sequoia Capital, Acrew Capital, 01 Advisors, Mucker Capital, Fika Ventures, F-Prime and Sound Ventures also participated in the fundraising.

The new investment will be used by Papaya to expand its team, forge additional partnerships and to continue building its technology.

The app works by enabling consumers to pay any bill “in seconds”, including parking tickets, medical invoices and utilities bills, by taking a photo of it, choosing a payment method and sending it through the Papaya app.

Papaya said that the app uses its artificial intelligence-powered “bill understanding technology” to reach any company in the US that issues bills.

Papaya is currently able to facilitate payments for hundreds of thousands of businesses and organisations in the US, and integrates with partners’ billing processes through embedded widget technologies and paper statements.

Patrick Kann, co-founder and CEO of Papaya, said: “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.”

Having worked at the World Bank and IdeaLab, Kann co-founded Papaya with chief technology officer Jason Meltzer, who had worked at iRobot.

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.”