Richie Serna founded Finix and is its chief executive. He started it as a payments infrastructure company, and in 2023 it became a full payment processor competing head-on with Stripe.
The Sequoia Episode
In 2020 Sequoia Capital led Finix's $35 million Series B, then walked away from the investment weeks later after deciding it conflicted with its stake in Stripe. Finix kept the money but lost Sequoia as a backer. Four years later he said the episode had helped put Finix on the map and had no lasting effect on the business.
Stripe Is Not the Whole Market
He pushes back on the Silicon Valley belief that Stripe owns payments. "Stripe only actually owns 6% of the US market, and less than 2% worldwide," he said. "Payments is still relatively fragmented, and probably about 91% of payments today still goes through systems that were built back in the '80s and the '90s."
Cost-Plus Pricing
Finix builds for businesses with both shops and websites that lack the developers to build payment experiences, which he puts in the tens of millions in America, and it integrates with several kinds of card readers. In place of a flat percentage per transaction it uses cost-plus pricing, showing each charge and its markup.
Becoming a Processor
He called becoming a processor "hugely transformational." Revenue quadrupled in the following year, and in October 2024 Finix raised $75M in a round led by Acrew Capital, with plans to grow beyond its 130 employees and into more countries.
The investor that dropped Finix for competing with Stripe saw the rivalry before Finix fully embraced it. He has since made that rivalry his strategy.
