PeerTransfer Picks Up $1.1M from Spark, Other Prominent Investors

Boston-area-based peerTransfer, a financial services software startup, said today it has raised its first financing round from an impressive list of venture capitalists and angel investors. The news was reported by the New York Times and other media outlets.

This financing is news because of the core idea and who the investors are, more than the dollar amount per se. The Web startup closed $1.1 million from Spark Capital, John Landry, Dave McClure, Jim Hornthal, Ken Morse, Roy Rodenstein, Project 11 Ventures (run by Reed Sturtevant and Katie Rae), and Spanish investors Marek Fodor, Pablo Carrallo, and Raul Aznar.

PeerTransfer specializes in online international money transfers and global payments. Its software matches up the transactions going between any two countries—money flowing from the U.S. to the U.K. and vice versa, for example—so as to figure out the net flow between customers, and to keep the money effectively moving only within each country. The idea is that customers save money on international transfer fees and exchange rates. The startup was incorporated in July 2009.

Back in June, founder and CEO Iker Marcaide, a native of Spain, spoke with me after peerTransfer won the 20,000-Euro prize in the HIT Global Entrepreneurship Competition in Barcelona.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.