Funding / Entrepreneur
INVESTING Individual Investor Financial Adviser FUNDING Entrepreneur Real Estate Fern Trading

Phil McGriskin and Paul Townsend
Co-founders, Vitesse

Meet the founder

Vitesse co-founders Phil McGriskin and Paul Townsend are serial payments entrepreneurs. In 2005, they built Envoy, a payments company later acquired by Worldpay. With Vitesse, they turned their hand to the ineffective and outdated global settlement process. Together, they’ve built a market-leading global domestic settlement and liquidity platform, spanning over 100 countries and 60 currencies. Having quickly become the go-to solution for Insurance Loss Funds, they’ve branched out to offer a world-leading cross-border payment solution for financial services, payroll and more.

“Octopus issued us a termsheet to lead our series A round in March 2020, just as the Covid-19 lockdowns were being put in place. Octopus stayed true to their word, and continued with completion on the same terms as agreed. They’ve worked closely with us in building out our senior leadership team and raising our series B round in 2022. We’re looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish together at Vitesse.”

Phil McGriskin

Why we invested

When the Octopus Ventures Fintech team spent nine months investigating cross-border payments, our conclusion was clear. Legacy banks were retrenching, funds were taking too long to reach beneficiaries, and hidden charges lurked at every stage of the process. Phil, Paul and the Vitesse team hadn’t just built a world-beating solution – in targeting Insurance Loss Funds they’d identified a greenfield solution in a space which generates $2.2tn in global revenues every year. We were delighted to have the opportunity to support Phil, Paul, and the Vitesse team in their next venture.

Initial investment stage

Series A

First invested

2020

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