The central idea behind Tapaya’s latest milestone is simple, but powerful: removing hardware from in-person payments. With a €1 million pre-seed round, the Prague-based startup is aiming to turn traditional payment terminals into outdated infrastructure. By translating the complexity of certification, compliance, and integrations into a single software layer, Tapaya enables any commercial device from smartphones to kiosks to function as a fully compliant POS system.
Funding signals growing confidence in deep fintech infrastructure
Tapaya has secured €1 million in a pre-seed round led by Passion Capital, with participation from Depo Ventures and BADideas.fund. While modest in size, the round carries weight due to the profile of its investors.
Passion Capital’s involvement is particularly telling. Known for backing foundational fintech infrastructure, their support suggests that Tapaya is addressing a technically complex and globally relevant problem one that sits at the core of how payments function, rather than at the user interface layer. The newly raised capital will primarily be used to complete PCI MPoC certification and to build proprietary infrastructure, allowing Tapaya to operate independently of third-party middleware and fully control its tap-to-phone stack.
Breaking the certification barrier in in-person payments
Despite rapid digitalization, in-person payments remain constrained by legacy systems. Businesses that want to accept card payments still face a combination of hardware dependency, regulatory friction, and high upfront costs. Introducing a new payment solution can take up to two years due to certification requirements, while the cost of deploying terminals often reaches hundreds of thousands of euros before any transaction is processed.
Tapaya’s approach replaces this fragmented system with a single SDK that integrates regulatory compliance, security, and processor connectivity. Instead of navigating lengthy approval processes and hardware logistics, developers can enable in-person payments in a matter of days. This shift is made possible by the PCI MPoC standard, which allows secure card acceptance on commercial off-the-shelf devices. By building directly on this framework, Tapaya is positioning itself within the fast-growing SoftPOS market, expected to surpass €1.14 billion by 2030.
From regional focus to global payment infrastructure
Founded in 2025 by Laura Ďorďová, Roman Kuchařík, and Petr Zahradník, Tapaya brings together a team with deep experience in building and certifying payment systems. While the company is initially focused on Central and Eastern Europe, its ambitions extend far beyond the region.
Its selection into the Mastercard Lighthouse Programme further reinforces its relevance within the broader payments ecosystem, signaling that major industry players see software-defined payment acceptance as a necessary evolution.
Looking ahead, Tapaya is building toward a more flexible payment infrastructure one that can support emerging use cases such as AI-driven transactions, digital currencies like the digital euro, and the continued expansion of digital wallets.
