Subscription management and recurring billing platform Chargebee has acquired Inai, a fintech start-up formerly incubated by Y Combinator, in an effort to accelerate innovation in payments observability and fee intelligence for merchants using AI solutions.
The terms of the transaction, which includes Inai’s team and technology, have not been disclosed. Founded by former Goldman Sachs VP Anantharaman Pattabiraman and ex-Samsung engineer Karthik Narayanan in 2021, Inai has developed a no-code payment, data intelligence and observability platform designed to help online businesses reduce involuntary churn and recover failed payments.
The platform’s Observe, Reconcile and Revive functions are backed by a generative AI chatbot called Inaibot, which works by analysing payment data and answering queries about transaction patterns, failures, and optimisation opportunities through a conversational interface.
Inai’s launch into the market was largely enabled by the Y Combinator accelerator programme of Summer 2021. This was followed by a $4 million seed funding round later that year, led by Paua Ventures, with participation from 9Unicorns, Uncommon Capital, Soma Capital, Anarko Ventures, Better Capital, FortyTwo VC, and Gemba Capital. Angels from GoCardless, Nested, Rocketplace, Earnest, Comply Advantage, and Omio are also among the company’s backers.
Chargebee is now moving to integrate this technology into its billing and monetisation solution, a combination, its statement says will “enable merchants to operate with smarter, faster, and more profitable workflows across multiple markets and payment gateways”.
“Our acquisition of Inai further strengthens our modular, merchant-first payments strategy and enables merchants to orchestrate payments across multiple providers while maintaining control and visibility through a centralised system,” comments Krish Subramanian, CEO and co-founder of Chargebee.
This echoes a similar move made by Zopa in the UK this week, with the group acquiring embedded finance provider Rvvup to bring multi-channel checkout experiences to merchants handling multiple payment methods.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
