The Gap in Marketplace Payments and How Ryft Is Closing It

Sadra Hosseini, CEO and co-founder of Ryft, joined the Start-Up Diaries podcast by Burns Sheehan to talk about scaling a payments business from seed to Series A. He covers the regulatory hurdles most fintechs avoid and why marketplace platforms miss out on significant revenue by sending merchants to third-party acquirers.

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Why most marketplaces leave payment revenue on the table

Ryft is Sadra's third business. His second was a venue marketplace app for restaurants and bars. It scaled to a million customers and 30 members of staff before being acquired. That experience led directly to Ryft.

"Once we started doing ten million of volume through the platform, we realised we could monetise these transactions rather than just charging a SaaS fee. What if we become a payment system ourselves?"

The team looked at the existing options. Stripe was built for smaller businesses. Adyen was built for enterprise. Neither was the right fit.

"We saw this gap in the market for businesses doing ten to two or three hundred million of volume, where they either can't monetise because there's no right solution, or they have to go and get their own licence. Two years, two to three million in build costs. And then they've still got all the overheads of running a payment system."

There are around 23,000 digital platforms across the UK and Europe, and approximately 3,000 marketplaces in that volume range. Rather than sending merchants to Worldpay or Stripe and collecting only a SaaS fee, a platform can launch its own branded payment system and keep a share of every transaction.

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What FCA authorisation means and why most fintechs avoid it

Ryft raised £2 million in seed funding. With that, the team prioritised licences before growth.

"Only 5% of businesses managed to get an FCA licence. We also got the Innovate UK grant. Only 8% of businesses get that, and you need an 86.7% acceptance rate across five assessors before they award it."

FCA authorisation matters because Ryft handles customer funds directly. Payment orchestrators and some gateways sit outside the flow of funds and do not need the same licensing. Ryft, as a payment facilitator, does.

"Because the customer funds are coming to us, we need those licences. FCA compliance, ongoing transaction monitoring, making sure there's no money laundering through the platform. It's very difficult to do, and most fintechs out there avoid it entirely."

Ryft holds FCA Licence. The EU licence is also in progress, a key requirement for UK and European marketplace businesses operating across borders.

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How Ryft builds payment solutions around marketplace clients

The product approach at Ryft is built around a simple principle: build what clients actually need, not what you think they need.

"You think your customer wants something, you spend six months building it, and then you go to market and they say, we're okay. Six months of developer time gone."

Ryft runs a weekly internal process, where feedback from the sales team flows directly to product and development.

"We go into a vertical, find a big client, build around them, and then expand across that vertical. We've been very pragmatic about that."

Tuft, a UK marketplace, reduced payment processing costs by 62% after switching from Stripe to Ryft. Epos Now, Love The Sales, and OrderTiger are among other customers where the platform has been deployed at scale.

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Hiring for drive, not just skills

Sadra is direct about what goes wrong in early-stage hiring:

"First and second-time founders usually hire based on skills. You look at the CV, get excited, they join and then they say, this is completely different to what I was used to."

Ryft now hires for culture fit first: drive, ownership mentality, and the ability to operate without handholding.

"Do they have the same drive? Can they get there even without all the skills?"

The team accepts a deliberate failure rate on hiring as part of the model:

"We have a 10% failure rate on hiring, because we give people a chance who don't have all the skills. We've seen people absolutely flourish. We've also seen people come in and realise it's way too much for them."

The environment is autonomous by design:

"I tell my team: don't ever be 100% successful, because that means we're not being risky enough."

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Series A and the vision to become the third player

At the time of recording, Ryft had just opened its Series A. The immediate focus is deepening UK coverage. 30% of all Visa and Mastercard volume across Europe flows through the UK. Expansion into four European territories is also planned this year. Series B is focused on the US market.

"To be the third player in this market. You have Adyen, Stripe, and then Ryft as the go-to for marketplaces and B2B digital platforms."

The partnership with American Express, a year in the making, adds further reach. Amex's focus is network growth, bringing more merchants onto the network. Ryft's platform gives them access to the SME businesses sitting underneath each marketplace in a single relationship.

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Why choose Ryft as your payment platform

Ryft is a leading Payment Services Provider built specifically for marketplaces and B2B digital platforms. FCA-authorised and PCI DSS Level 1 certified, Ryft handles the full flow of funds. That includes payment acceptance, automated split payments, seller onboarding, delayed payments, and transaction monetisation, all from a single integration with 24/7 UK-based support.

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