Form3 planning US launch as Goldman Sachs leads its $160m funding round

CEO Michael Mueller says Form3 is now handling a “double-digit percentage” of all UK Faster Payments.

Just 12 months after a swathe of Tier 1 UK banks took equity stakes in Form3, the payments infrastructure group has raised a new $160m funding round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The round is prepping Form3 for international expansion, primarily focusing on the US, where Form3 says it is already in “advanced conversations” with several American banks.

“It’s probably the biggest opportunity for us that is out there,” CEO Michael Mueller told AltFi. “The market in the US is very attractive given the state of affairs with real-time payments taking off, and with respect to the technology that the banks are using.”

“But it’s not only the US. We’re identifying a number of markets we'd like to enter.”

Form3 is also understood to be considering expansion options in Europe and Southeast Asia, harnessing its existing relationship with partners and its shareholder Mastercard.

Other existing investors in this latest round included Mastercard, Lloyds, Nationwide, Barclays, 83 North and Draper Esprit—who were all involved in Form3’s last $33m raise in 2020.

"In scheme-based payments, there's no one in the world doing what Form3 is doing," Draper Esprit partner Vinoth Jayakumar told AltFi. "It's a very unique effort, meaning that value is appreciating at a very high speed."

As a reminder, Form3 is working on a new domestic payments network for banks that takes advantage of the latest cloud technology and is in line with upcoming payments regulations.

The CEO told AltFi that Form3 is now processing a “double-digit percentage” of all the UK’s faster payments every day on its platform without issue.

“The trend that we spotted some years ago, that banks will migrate to cloud-native technology, that is real and is happening.”

The fresh cash brings Form3’s total funding to date to $220m and, although Muller has never disclosed the company’s valuation, Form3 is clearly fast-becoming one of the UK’s standout fintechs after only being founded in 2016.