A leading hotel payment software startup, Selfbook has announced that it has raised $25M of funding in a series A round. The round was led by an investment firm Tiger Global Management along with the participation of Valia Ventures, Fin Venture Capital, and Lachy Groom which is the early stripe employee turned investor.
Selfbook Series 125m Funding
This funding has led the total raised amount to $30M and has brought the valuation of $125M. This valuation has shown almost 16 times more growth when compared to last quarter’s fundraising of $2M, stated by the CEO and Co-founder of Selfbook, Khalid Meniri and he also confirmed that some other investors with “super pro rata” have also participated in this round and they are, Better Tomorrow Venture, TenOneTen Ventures, Abstract Venture and 9Yard Capital.
Selfbook, which develops payment platforms, has claimed to eliminate fraud and reduce chargeback, with the help of their software that allows hotels a way to accept payments directly from their website, in just one click.
Khalid Meniri founded Selfbook as a pivot company in 2020, selfbook shifted towards a business-to-business company from just a travel app. As a travel app, it was founded in 2015 and is located in New York, New York, United States.
It describes itself as “Shopify for travel” and says that it handles the joining of hospitality and fintech as per selfbook series tiger 125m b2bann azevedotechcrunch.
According to Khalid, “with just a single line of code”, hotels can contrive its technology, to improve their experience of booking, directly on their prevailing reservation system.
Selfbook started its startup with just a single hotel and now it has signed deals with almost ninety(90) hotels from which 15 of them have gone live so far. Its customers are expanded in a large area of this globe including, Le Pigalle in Paris, The Lines’s Locations in Los Angeles, Eden Rock St Barths, Washington DC, Austin, and Texas. The United States and U.E markets are the main targets of selfbook.
Selfbook has already confirmed the ten times growth in digital wallets and sign-in users and almost 67% of bookings were managed on digital wallets on mobile. It also mentioned that for the hotels with digital wallet support, its software is the sole provider of payment tech for them.
Digital wallet support includes Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, and Buy Now Pay Later. All the debit cards and credit cards are also supported by its software for a simple payment methodology. Along with all this, selfbook’s software also enables direct links to booking.
The main purpose of Selfbook is to simplify the hotel booking procedure and to give the security of the next level in the payment processes. Along with this the software also provides the ease of other multiple services like
- The reservation for restaurants
- Taking appointments for the spa’s
- Swimming pool bookings
- Banquet hall booking in the hotels, etc, along with other exciting activities and everything in just a single payment flow.
Now, selfbook has a team of 50 dedicated members and they will surely use these funds to grow their recruitment further.
In an interview, Khalid said, that during the hair-raising pandemic season, the hospitality industry was hit and impacted enormously. He said that their team decided to standardize their unique payment and transaction engine and upgrade the direct booking process of hotels for everyone.
To help the hotel industry to recover from the pandemic loss effects, more easily and comfortably, we decided to relaunch Selfbook to directly give our payment solution to hotels.
The lead investor of this round, Tiger Global Management is the investment company that focuses on the private and public firms of internet, consumer, software, and financial tech. It is an American firm that was started in 2001 by Chase Coleman III.
Selfbook is not only up to the way to modernizing the hotel booking experience but it also has the competence to maximize the regeneration of hotel operators and upgrade the experience of booking for guests as well, Tiger Global Partner, Alex Cook stated.
“The condition of online hotel booking is worst but selfbook is a joy to use and it is obviously its future,” said Khali Meniri.
Conclusion
Selfbook is on its journey to simplify the hotel booking experience for its customers and to make its online payment system almost invulnerable. The $25M funding raised by selfbook has the aim to fulfill this dream and in this journey, Tiger Global has walked shoulder by shoulder with them along with some other investors. Selfbook is ready to change the hotel booking system.
FAQs
Ans. $30M
Ans. To eliminate fraud and reduce the chargeback from online hotel bookings.
Ans. $125M
Ans. Tiger Global Management.
Ans. Khalid Meniri.
