M-commerce firm paythru becomes first business backed by Restoration Alpha Angels

Technology merchant bank Restoration Partners has closed the first investment to be made through its Restoration Alpha Angels network.

Mobile commerce payments platform paythru has raised £700,000 through Restoration Alpha Angels, a network of active investors, to boost its growth efforts.

Buckinghamshire-headquartered paythru provides a cloud-based service which turns a mobile device into a point-of-sale payments device.

Restoration Alpha Angels is a network of investors set up by Restoration Partners, a technology merchant bank set up by Ken Olisa. The network was formed in the second half of 2012 and is said to provide its investor base to pre-qualified investment opportunities.

Speaking to GrowthBusiness, Sam Forman, principal at Restoration Partners, says, ‘The Restoration Alpha Angels is an adjunct to our existing merchant banking offering, and is an attractive proposition for both clients and our close network of active investors.’

Forman has led the deal for Restoration Partners and he says, ‘Investors benefit from receiving a small number of pre-qualified, heavily screened, high quality investment opportunities from within the existing Restoration Partners client base – and so are benefiting from our experience and expertise in the technology sector whilst utilising our proprietary strategic framework to reduce risk and drive growth towards a defined exit.’

As part of the deal, former CEO of Open Text John Shackleton is to join the board of paythru. Shackleton’s appointment is said to further enhance paythru’s ability to deliver ‘innovative, universal and secure payment solutions’ to merchants and consumers across the globe.

Forman adds, ‘paythru have been a client for nearly two years and are an exciting, innovative and dynamic company in a sexy space. They’ve secured some fantastic clients in their target sectors, have a solid pipeline and big plans for the future, and so have created a lot of interest within the Alpha Angels.’

See also: Merchant services and ecommerce: what’s the link?

Hunter Ruthven

Hunter Ruthven

Hunter was the Editor for GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2012 to 2014, before moving on to Caspian Media Ltd to be Editor of Real Business.