Founded in 2025, the company is building infrastructure that allows banks, fintechs, and software platforms to integrate in-store payment acceptance directly into their applications. Tapaya already has integrations underway in the Czech Republic and is developing partnerships across Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics.
In-person payments are still largely dependent on dedicated hardware terminals, creating additional costs and operational complexity for merchants. For companies looking to embed payment acceptance into their own systems, such as POS platforms, ERP software, or kiosks, the barriers are even higher. Certification processes can take up to 18–24 months, require multiple approvals, and cost hundreds of thousands of euros. The SoftPOS market reached €336 million globally in 2024 and is forecast to grow at 23% annually to €1.14 billion by 2030. In Europe, contactless card payments grew 12% in the first half of 2025, according to the European Central Bank, yet existing infrastructure struggles to support newer payment methods and digital wallets, which are expected to exceed €13.5 trillion in transaction value by 2028.
Tapaya addresses this by abstracting compliance, certification, and processor integrations into a single software layer. This enables developers to integrate payment acceptance across Android, iOS, and other commercial devices, including tablets, kiosks, and enterprise systems, turning standard devices into payment terminals and effectively removing the need for dedicated terminals. By eliminating the need to interact with processors or navigate regulatory frameworks, Tapaya reduces integration timelines from months or even years to days. The platform connects to multiple processors, banks, and card schemes, giving partners flexibility while enabling merchants to manage payments within their existing systems.
“We want accepting payments to be as simple as turning on a light. For decades, it has meant relying on a piece of hardware, buying it, carrying it, connecting it, and reconciling it separately. Merchants are tired of that complexity. We’ve seen firsthand how much time and cost goes into enabling something as simple as that. While the rest of commerce has moved into software, payments have remained stuck in hardware. Tapaya removes that friction by packaging the entire stack into a single SDK, so developers can integrate payments as easily as any other feature."
The system is designed to meet evolving security standards introduced by the global PCI Security Standards Council, the global body that governs how card payments are processed and protected. Until 2022, accepting card payments legally required certified hardware. A new global security framework, PCI MPoC, changed that, making secure card acceptance possible on any commercial device for the first time. By consolidating compliance and infrastructure into a single integration, Tapaya allows software platforms and financial institutions to offer in-person payments without building their own certification stack.
The funding will be used to complete Tapaya’s certification under the PCI MPoC standard and to further develop its in-house infrastructure, reducing reliance on third-party components. Tapaya was founded in July 2025 by Laura Ďorďová, Roman Kuchařík, and Petr Zahradník, who previously worked together building and certifying payment products. The company is supported by Senior Advisor Nils Melngailis, an experienced financial services executive who has held senior advisor roles at several institutions, including Blackstone and the IMF, and currently serves as Chairman of PrivatBank, the largest bank in Ukraine. Tapaya has been selected for the Mastercard Lighthouse Programme and was named a winner in the Digital category at Startup Awards Slovakia 2025.
“What draws us to Tapaya is the combination of deep technical credibility and a genuinely underserved gap. The team has already navigated the hardest parts of payments certification once, so they know exactly what they are abstracting away for their customers. In-person payments represent six times the transaction volume of online, yet the infrastructure available to software builders has barely evolved. Tapaya is changing the access equation for an entire layer of the market.”
Over the coming months, Tapaya also plans to expand its partner network across Europe. Long-term plans include preparing its platform to support emerging current and upcoming trends, including agentic payments that trigger physical payment transactions and the digital Euro.
„Tapaya is the kind of company people outside the region say CEE can’t produce – deep fintech infrastructure, built from first principles and sold to the world. They’re already being asked to replace incumbent SDKs on live deployments. A London-led round with Passion Capital and acceptance into Mastercard Lighthouse in their first year is a clear signal of where Central European fintech is heading,“ says Michal Ciffra, partner at DEPO Ventures and co-founder of the fintech accelerator The FinTechers, of which Tapaya was a part.
