London-based Token.io, an open banking-based account-to-account payments service, raises a $40M Series C co-led by Cota Capital and TempoCap
The rise of digital payments has changed the nature of how people do business with each other; and open banking — a movement in banking where incumbents …
Context & Ripple Effects
Token.io's Series C closes a three-year gap since its $16.5M round in 2019, when it was positioning as an open banking platform for lower-cost instant payments; the new $40M from Cota Capital and TempoCap funds the shift from platform ambition to a scaled account-to-account payments service.
The round lands in an unusually crowded London field: Fidel API's $65M Series B in April 2022, Banked's $20M Series A two months earlier, and later mega-rounds for TrueLayer, Volt, and Brite Payments all target adjacent slices of bank-connected payments — making Token.io one of several well-capitalized contenders racing to own the merchant-facing A2A rail.
First-order effects
- Cota Capital and TempoCap now hold board-level stakes in a company whose direct job is converting open banking access into merchant account-to-account volume, extending Token.io's runway against rivals like Banked and Volt that raised comparable rounds within months.
Second-order effects
- Merchants evaluating pay-by-bank checkout gain multiple funded UK/European vendors, pushing the cluster toward price and integration-speed competition rather than education — while banks face more API partners negotiating for transaction flow through their rails.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, account-to-account payments consolidate around a handful of capitalized intermediaries sitting between merchants and banks, shifting interchange economics away from card networks and making open banking infrastructure a distinct, investable layer of European fintech.
The trend: Open banking is spawning a funded London-centered cohort of account-to-account payment providers competing to route merchant transactions directly through bank rails.