“We closed our partnership over a Gypsy handshake!”
“Yap was a very hypothesis-driven investment for us. I had been looking for a “fintech anywhere” investment in India for more than a year. When I met the YAP team (ex-VISA), who come with deep domain expertise, a humble air around them and the business scale despite its size – I was deeply impressed.”
23 October, 2020
Team Yap are down to earth founders with handshake quality! That’s just what we did – shook hands after 2-hour long meeting with the co-founders – Madhu, Muthu and Prabhu in mid-2019. This handshake is now often referred to as “Gypsy Handshake” (inspired by the popular Netflix show Peaky Blinders).
By the time we met the team they already had a more mature credit card issuing software stack than Marqeta, it’s an older aspirational cousin in the USA, with significant bootstrapped volumes. Certainly, one of the largest API platforms for Banking & Payments I had seen in broader Asia at this stage. We, at BEENEXT, deeply value working with independent founders who know where they are going, and with YAP we got just that. Madhu and the team have also been actively involved in creating leaders not just within the company, but also in the fintech community.
Today, YAP clocks over USD2bn in annual payments volume has several hundred fintech and bank partners resulting in millions of transactions every month. Even though it has just been a little over 12 months into our partnership, we have built a great relationship with the team and keep learning from their unique style to approaching business.