Wednesday, February 4, 2009

KPG Ventures Funds Nat'l Payment Card


I wrote about National Payment Card earlier this year. Why $4.00 a Gallon Gas is More Appealing to NPS.   Now comes word that they've raised $2 million for expansion, so apparently KPG Ventures found something very appealing about their decoupled debit program.  Here's the press release:

KPG Ventures Funds National Payment Card Association With $2 Million for Expansion Into Supermarket and Chain Drug Verticals

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KPG Ventures—a venture capital firm specializing in seed-stage disruptive technology companies, today announced it has invested $2 million in National Payment Card Association, an emerging company responsible for creating a large scale, low cost debit settlement system benefiting consumers and merchants with lower transaction fees. KPG Ventures’ investment will propel National Payment Card Association’s growth beyond the fuel and convenience markets and into supermarkets and chain drug outlets.

National Payment Card Association’s technology is currently being deployed in fuel and convenience stores across the country, allowing consumers to save money and merchants an alternative to the large transaction processing fees charged by traditional transaction processors.

“National Payment Card Association’s product is an innovative, money-saving concept that has already met with a great deal of success,” said National Payment Card Association CEO and Founder Joe Randazza. “In these difficult times, the support and vote of confidence we have received from a specialized venture capital firm like KPG Ventures is validation of our model and technology, and well positions us for future growth.”

“KPG seeks investments that can scale and solve a highly defined consumer problem and found both of them in National Payment Card Association,” said Dave Hills, a General Partner of KPG Ventures. “Joe and the team have built a great product and we’re happy to support them.”

National Payment Card Association first introduced its alternative payment solution in June 2006 and has earned much attention from industry insiders and consumers. The National Payment Card Association PIN based payment system processes transactions through the Federal Reserve Automated Clearing House (ACH), resulting in lower merchant fees and a self-funded loyalty program that can provide immediate savings to consumers. Specifically, the program benefits retailers by helping them shift away from the interchange fees credit card companies normally charge on each transaction by moving them to the lower cost ACH system. The merchant can then use some of the savings to change customers’ payment behavior by passing some of that savings along to them right at the pump.

Founded in 2006, KPG Ventures is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. KPG focuses on the consumer Internet sector of technology-driven businesses, investing at the seed-stage cycle of a company’s development. With a proven track record of picking the right companies and teams who are focused on highly capital efficient opportunities that require little capital to reach profitability, KPG has launched many successful companies. The firm concentrates its efforts on a small handful of companies at a time so that it can leverage the strategic and operating expertise of its general partners.

For more information about KPG Ventures, please visit kpgventures.com. For more information on National Payment Card Association, please visit nationalpaymentcard.com or contact Shep Doniger at 561-637-5750.



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