London Fintech Round Raises $6M Seed for Payroll Platform
▼ Summary
– Round, a London fintech that automates treasury and payments for finance teams, has raised a $6 million seed round.
– The funding was led by Alstin Capital with participation from Backed VC, Love Ventures, existing customers, and angels like Indeed’s co-founder.
– Early investor Passion Capital, a backer of Monzo and Tide, increased its investment in this round.
– The company simultaneously launched two products: an Agentic Workflow Builder and an Autonomous Payroll system.
– The platform integrates with a company’s existing banks and systems to automate cash flows, positioning itself as an orchestrator rather than a replacement.
A London-based fintech firm specializing in automated treasury and payroll operations has secured $6 million in a seed funding round. The company, Round, serves finance teams at high-growth businesses by integrating with their existing banking, ERP, and payment systems to orchestrate cash movements automatically. This latest investment will support the launch of new autonomous workflow products designed to streamline complex financial processes.
The seed round was led by Alstin Capital, with additional participation from Backed VC and Love Ventures. Notably, approximately ten percent of Round’s current customer base also contributed to the financing. The round attracted new angel investors, including Paul Forster, the co-founder of Indeed. Passion Capital, an early investor in notable fintechs like Monzo and Tide, increased its stake after leading the company’s $2.1 million pre-seed round in October 2024.
Founded by Pac O’Shea and Hayyaan Ahmad, Round’s platform acts as a central command layer for corporate finance. Instead of requiring manual execution for each step, the system automates flows based on pre-set parameters. Finance teams define rules for payment approvals, schedules, and minimum cash balances, and Round handles the execution. This includes making payments, optimizing idle cash in treasury accounts, and managing payroll funding. Its client roster includes the AI money app Cleo and the analytics platform PostHog.
Coinciding with the fundraise, Round is introducing two flagship products. The first is an Agentic Workflow Builder. This tool allows finance professionals to describe a desired automation process in plain English. Round then generates the workflow for review and, once approved, runs it continuously. The system only alerts teams via Slack, WhatsApp, or email when a human decision is necessary. The second launch is Autonomous Payroll. This product connects to a company’s existing payroll software, manages the approval chain, funds the payroll run from treasury accounts, executes payments, and confirms completion, consolidating a typically fragmented multi-system task.
CEO Pac O’Shea framed the company’s mission by drawing a parallel to software development tools. “Cursor didn’t get big by replacing the CTO. It got big by doing the work which engineers didn’t want to do. We’re taking the same approach, but for finance,” he explained, referencing the popular AI coding assistant that automates repetitive tasks without removing developer oversight.
Andreas Schenk, a partner at lead investor Alstin Capital, emphasized the fundamental innovation of Round’s model. He noted the platform is uniquely “positioned between banks, ERPs, and payment rails and orchestrates cash flows in real time,” representing a novel architectural approach to finance operations rather than a simple incremental improvement on current methods.
(Source: The Next Web)
