Astra Nets $10M and Line of Credit for Card to Card Payments Expansion

Astra, which works with finance transfer technology, has announced a Series A funding round that netted it $10 million, a press release said.

The company offers a “lightweight API integration” letting developers add faster settlement and financial automation to their products. Developers can use the product to allow for accelerated and risk-mitigated transfers without having to account for things like compliance, capital commitments or operational costs.

Astra touts an “all-in-one” approach that also comes with anti-fraud measures, with the whole package allowing for more financial functionality.

The new funding will help Astra add to its hiring, with a focus on engineering and compliance resources. The company wants to keep enabling faster payments, along with allowing for more payment solutions for companies growing their customer bases.

It comes as the ACH network has transferred $72 trillion just in 2021, with transactions growing since its inception in 2012 for most of the existing payment categories like P2P, B2B and direct deposits.

Transaction volume is also only expected to increase even more going forward.

Gil Akos, CEO and co-founder of Astra, said it was important to look at time to money as a metric for financial-related companies, including how quickly a user can complete onboarding, fund their account and begin spending.

“With this new capital, we are excited to not only grow our portfolio of solutions but to bring faster money movement capabilities to a larger customer base,” he said.

Astra has also begun using Visa’s real-time payment service Visa Direct, PYMNTS wrote.

Read more: Astra Taps Visa Direct to Offer Faster Payments

The move will let Astra offer faster payments for “millions” of users, letting them fund cards, wallets and various other types of services using eligible debit cards.

“The onboarding experience for a new user of a neobanking or marketplace application is critical and only lasts a few moments,” Astra said in the release. “In many cases, funding a new bank account or wallet includes waiting multiple days for an ACH transfer to clear before the associated debit card can be used.”