ZooZ, the startup company that offers a complete, secure, and easy-to-use payment solution for e-commerce websites and mobile apps, has secured a $2M Series A funding led by Portola Valley, CA-based XSeed.

Capital, with participation from existing investors lool ventures and Rhodium, both of which also contributed to ZooZ’s seed round.

“Our ability to close a robust Series A round in an increasingly crowded payments market underscores the strength and market potential of our approach,” Oren Levy, Co-founder and CEO of ZooZ.  “By focusing on creating a superior consumer checkout experience that ultimately leads to better conversion for retailers and developers, we’ve been able to clearly differentiate ourselves from the competition while attracting investors, partners and customers alike.”

This new round of funding will be used  to add new product functionality, increase traction with retailers, solidify new partnerships, and otherwise build its presence in the rapidly expanding global payments market.  This round brings ZooZ’s total funding to date to $3.5 million.

“ZooZ has already established an impressive track record with its market-leading mobile functionality in ways that are incredibly easy for customers to implement,” stated Robert Siegel, the General Partner of XSeed Capital.  “Our investment in ZooZ highlights the confidence we have in Oren and his team and their vision to optimize and transform the entire checkout experience.”

ZooZ Intends to be the Eminent Mobile Payment Platform for Customers and Merchants

To better understand how ZooZ works and their place in the mobile-payment ecology, SiliconANGLE sat down with CEO Oren Levy to talk about how this funding will help customers.

“What we’re all about is boosting conversions; all about reducing shopping cart abandonment,” Levy said about the platform. “Yes, we do process payments, but it’s so much more than that. It’s not only about the user interface; it’s about the user experience.”

When it comes to accepting and providing payment methods ZooZ intends to be king of the hill: the platform provides payment through not just credit cards, but also the option to use PayPal or Dwolla (as well as many other options.) As a platform, the company wants to present the Swiss-army knife of payments. Also, in a nice bit of synergy, ZooZ also enables customers to use mobile payment service Fortumo (who make it easy for customers to use their mobile bill to make payments.)

“We want to offer just enough options and localize properly-,” Levy adds. “If in the US then don’t offer a Russian wallet service; and for someone from Russia an e-wallet instead of a credit card.” Particularly because a majority of Russians do not use credit cards and they’re more likely to use Kiwi e-wallet.

This Levy calls “payment intelligence” or essentially a type of localization by the system to understand customer payment behaviors. By knowing what sort of services the local customer is most likely to have on hand and offer those immediately it’s more likely that customers will feel comfortable making a purchase.

ZooZ is truly a global mobile payment platform that covers Europe in general, much of Asia, and is currently gaining traction in the United States. The company also has a great deal of merchants signed on with customers all across the continent of Australia. Smartphone use in many countries is growing and mobile apps are a huge source of customers.

For merchants and developers, ZooZ also seeks to be an extremely easy, seamless integration.

The SDK is about 3 lines of code for a developer to integrate into iPhone or Android; and there’s an HTML5 version that caters to desktop or even mobile web. One of the highlights of ZooZ is that quick and easy integration.

No complicated gateways or API means that merchants and developers can get on board with the payment platform with just as much ease as would be presented to customers.

Already ZooZ has over 5,000 merchants and is expanding globally; and has announced that its onboarding some very large merchants. The addition of this nice base of merchants and their customers alongside the current Series A funding will enable the company to tackle the ever enlarging consumer audience for mobile apps and the merchants who would love to serve them.

Authors: Mellisa Tolentino and Kyt Dotson