Hotel payment software provider Selfbook has completed a $15 million extension of its Series A financing, valuing the company at $300 million.
Tiger Global Management led the expansion, as did the company’s $40 million Series A in October. At the time, New York-based Selfbook was valued at $125 million – so it’s essentially seen a 2.4x valuation increase from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022 and a 38x increase after it started a seed-market. had picked up round of xx in April 2021.
The new strategic investor JAWS Estates Capital – the family office of hotelier Barry Sternlicht – also invested in the expansion. Sternlicht is co-founder and chairman of Starwood Capital Group.
“The first round was a quick process. We put it all together in a week,” said Khalid Meniri, co-founder and CEO of Selfbook. “And the second was one day because it was mostly an overflow of some investors who couldn’t make it through the first round.”
Founded in September 2020 as a pivot from a consumer travel app to a B2B company, Selfbook describes itself as the “Shopify for travel” and says it operates at the intersection of hospitality and fintech. Hotels can implement their technology “with a single line of code” according to Meniri to improve their booking experience directly on their existing reservation systems.
Selfbook says its software offers hotels a way to accept one-click payments directly on their websites, while eliminating fraud and reducing chargebacks. The company claims its software is the only hotel payment technology that supports the use of digital wallets, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and buy now, pay later. It also supports traditional debit and credit card payments.
“We make sure they can install Apple Pay, Google Pay, or BNPL with a single integration,” Meniri says. “It can take more than 500 man-hours to integrate with a digital wallet because of all the complications surrounding the cryptogram and the MMR. But our proprietary technology already takes care of that.” In addition to one-click payment, Selfbook’s software also offers direct booking links and smart merchandising, according to Meniri.
Although he declined to reveal hard sales figures, Meniri said the company’s customer base had grown about 100% month over month. He said we could infer that revenue growth is directly correlated with user base growth, but that it can fluctuate depending on the value of the contract. The workforce has grown from 5 last April to 70 today.
According to Meniri, Selfbook currently has 30 clients live on its platform and nearly 100 hotels are on board. The company makes money by charging a flat rate of 1% on all transactions it helps facilitate. Selfbook may increase that to 2% in the future.
Image Credits: CEO and Co-Founder Khalid Meniri / Selfbook/Michael Mundy
Initially Selfbook was aimed at boutique or independent hotels or small groups representing between 5 and 25 properties. In the second quarter, it expects to partner with some fintechs that wanted to serve hotels but couldn’t due to limitations in legacy systems.
“By introducing our technology, these fintechs allow us to talk to bigger chains,” Meniri said, “which excites us from a growth and credibility perspective and gives us market recognition with some of these large, established fintech public companies support and vouch for us, and act as our sellers.”
This year, the company plans to launch an extension product called PayBox, which will allow it to install payments on existing cash register flows.
“This is very good for chains that already have a custom booking engine, and without replacing all of that, we will replace the payment flow,” explains Meniri.
Part of Selfbook’s value proposition, he believes, is that it provides hotels with a way to let guests book instantly. This results in greater customer satisfaction and fewer cancellations, he added, leading to more revenue for the hotel than if they booked with a third party.
“Our software pays for itself,” Meniri says. “By using it, hotels can increase their direct revenue by 3 to 4 percent.”
“Hotels crave a direct dialogue with customers,” Meniri says. “They want to make it easier for their guests to add rooms or remove nights. They have to be able to do that dynamically and automatically.”
Tiger Global Partner Alex Cook said Selfbook’s “plug-and-play” software “securely” supports multiple payment types and can be customized “to meet the unique needs of each hotel, from boutique hotels to global chains.”
“We wanted to double Selfbook after hearing the excitement from their hotel customers and seeing the continued rapid growth in recent months,” he added. “We are excited to continue our partnership with the Selfbook team as they streamline the hotel booking experience.”
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This post Selfbook raises $15 million against $300 appraisal in Tiger-led extension to give hotels a way to accept ‘one-click’ payments – TechCrunch was original published at “https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/08/selfbook-raises-15m-at-a-300-valuation-in-tiger-led-extension-to-give-hotels-a-way-to-accept-one-click-payments/”