A few years ago, payment orchestration was a foreign term to many of the large companies Juan Pablo Ortega would be speaking at. Today, the Yuno The co-founder and CEO doesn’t need to explain that much.
“The perception has changed dramatically,” Ortega told TechCrunch. “Many large companies are now well aware of what payment orchestration is, and in fact some of them are starting to do RFPs just for orchestration.”
These multinational companies typically use half a dozen payment providers, acquirers and banks to meet their needs globally, but Yuno says they only need one payment orchestration provider globally. Payment orchestration is a way to integrate all these payment providers and financial institutions into a single layer to replace the individual services that global technology companies already use to facilitate each payment conversion. The company launched its product in October 2022 to provide a wide range of payment methods — over 300, in fact — with fraud detection capabilities, one-click checkout, and advanced smart routing technology.
TechCrunch covered the Colombian payments startup, which has raised $10 million from some heavyweight investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Today, Yuno has facilitated transactions in more than 40 countries worldwide and works with corporate clients such as McDonald’s, Rappi, Avianca and inDrive.
Yuno Payments Dashboard. Image Credits: Yuno
The global payment orchestration market is projected to reach almost 7 billion dollars in value by 2032. In Latin America, in particular, merchants trying to serve customers in other countries must figure out how to collect different currencies and from customers who don’t have credit cards.
The potential opportunity has attracted companies around the world hoping to grab a piece of that pie, including Gr4vy, Plug and Revio. Similar to Yuno’s fundraising from top investors, Simetrik, also based in Colombia, is developing a payments infrastructure and is now backed by Goldman Sachs.
Many of Yuno’s competitors focus on payment orchestration solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, and few weren’t building the infrastructure for large enterprises, Ortega says.
“We’re one of the few orchestrators that actually have integrations around the world,” Ortega said. “Today we have more than 150 integrations that allow companies to access payment methods that require payment processors on all different continents.”
Over the past year, Yuno has caught the eye of leading investment firm DST Global Partners, which raised a recent $25 million Series A injection into the company. DST was joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Kaszek Ventures and Monashees. This new round of capital gives Yuno a $150 million valuation, Ortega said.
The funding will be used to strengthen Yuno’s presence in Asia, Europe and Africa and also to continue investing in building its payment infrastructure orchestration platform.
“We will continue to build our sales, product and technology teams throughout most of the first quarter,” Ortega said. “In addition to Latin America, we also have offices in New York and Singapore, so a greater presence in these markets will be key for this year.”
