Irish financial technology startup Plynk Ltd. has raised $28 million in a Series A round that was led by Swiss Privée International Ltd.

Founded in 2015, Plynk offers a “money messaging app” that facilitates peer-to-peer payments between its users in a way that removes the complexities of money transfers among family and friends. The app allows users to send money to another person by using their name, as drawn from their Facebook account, versus an account number, and offers payments instantly with no fees. The app also gives the users a payment account with dedicated International Bank Account Number and a virtual Mastercard, allowing them to use funds they have received on third-party sites, as well as receive payments through traditional banking transfers.

The company soft-launched its product in January and now has over 6,000 users in Ireland through their Android and iOS apps, but has higher ambitions with plans to use the new funding to expand further into Europe, with Spain and Portugal the next markets on their radar.

“Our growth plan is simple: ‘become a verb, in every European language.’ Over 2017, we will use this secured funding to expand into new markets as well as add Great Britain Pounds to our platform,” Plynk Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Charles Dowd, who previously worked for Facebook Europe, said in a statement. “Hiring will also be a priority, adding more team members to continue development on our core product and to build more features unique to the social payments industry.”

Plynk takes on a number of existing players in the space, mostly notably TransferWise Ltd. Best-known for its international money transfer service, it also recently started supporting transfers using Facebook accounts. There’s also PayPal Holdings Inc., both directly with its traditional service and its recently launched Slack P2P service and through its subsidiary Venmo. A future competitor in the space may be Apple Inc., which was rumored to be building a P2P payments platform in April.

Including the new funding, Plynk has raised $29 million to date. Previous investors include the Bank of Ireland’s Start-Up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund, Enterprise Ireland and NDRC.

Image: Plynk