Dive Brief:

• Highnote, a San Francisco-based card issuing and embedded payments company, raised $90 million in a funding round led by Adams Street Partners, according to a press release last Tuesday. The company said it also debuted its new acquiring service.
• Previous Highnote investors, including Pinegrove Venture Partners, Costanoa, WestCap and Oak HC/FT, also participated in the latest investment round, per the press release. Adams Street Partners, founded in Chicago, also has offices in four other U.S. cities, as well as in Europe and Asia, according to its website.
• Highnote’s new acquiring service lets companies accept card payments online using a plug-in checkout software or a customized checkout design, the company said.

Dive Insight:

Highnote’s quest to develop acquiring capabilities began years prior. Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures and West Cap and other investors poured $54 million into the company in 2021. At that time, Highnote used the funding to hire more product and engineering staffers to build out its platform, including expanding globally, full-stack acquiring and instant credit issuing, according to a company press release. To date, Highnote has raised about $145 million from investors. 

“With Highnote’s modern embedded finance platform, enterprise customers and B2B platforms can manage all internal, vendor, and customer-facing financial transaction activity on a single, unified, reconciled payments platform,” the company said in the Jan. 21 release.

The company is led by CEO John MacIlwaine, who previously was the chief product and technology officer at processing business Braintree after it was purchased by digital payments giant PayPal. MacIlwaine founded the company along with Kin Kee, who was director of architecture at Braintree.

“The acquiring landscape has evolved over time and represents an opportunity for next generation customers to accelerate growth through embedded acquiring in addition to embedded issuing,” MacIlwaine said in the release.

The former Braintree executives have also attracted capital from a former PayPal colleague, Bill Ready, who was chief operating officer at PayPal before becoming president of commerce and payments at tech juggernaut Google and now CEO of social media site Pinterest, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In addition to raising millions of dollars from investors, Highnote has grown its roster of major payment partners in recent years.

In 2022, the company teamed up with Mastercard and Flowcast to help Mastercard launch a credit card for small and mid-sized businesses seeking credit access and growth capital. That same year, the company deepened its relationships with network behemoth Visa and the fintech peer Plaid.