SaaS platform provider Hanzo wraps up Series A funding

Contxto – Brazilian Software as a service (SaaS) consumer engagement platform provider Hanzo recently wrapped up its Series A for an undisclosed amount. The investment round was led by Dot Capital and Mastercard, according to a press release.

These funds will be channeled to expand into other countries and triple its revenue in 2020.

Hanzo gives you a hand with customer engagement

Federico Pisani Massamormile founded this startup in 2004 in Brazil with the purpose of facilitating mobile marketing campaigns. Through its white label engagement platform, Hanzo enables businesses to create and deploy their own customer loyalty apps.

Amongst its services are push notifications, email marketing, surveys, management of discount coupons and instant rewards and control of sweepstake campaigns.

Aside from all these benefits for a businesses’ marketing department, Hanzo also allows its customers to create their own online cash register. Through it, a company can upload their products and a person can view them and complete payments. From these proceedings sales reports are also available.

The startup and Mastercard had been working closely since 2015. More recently, Hanzo helped develop the payment giant’s loyalty program for managing points for credit and debit card transactions. Moreover, Hanzo was also part of Mastercard’s global acceleration program in 2018.

Hanzo has also provided its SaaS solutions to other brands like Unilever and major Brazilian pet shop chain, Petz.

The fact that a startup has bragging rights with a global name such as Mastercard likely gives it brownie points in terms of reassuring customers they’re in the right hands.

Pause and think about PCI compliance

It’s interesting to note Hanzo states that its platform is certified by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Standards Council. Complying with these standards is something worth thinking about if there are any B2B (business to business) startups out there that manage credit card transactions. Here’s how it (basically) works.

Global payment providers such as Mastercard, American Express, and Visa created the PCI Standards Council. As an autonomous body, this council provides a series of security standards and requirements for merchants that process credit cards.

By being PCI-compliant, a business lessens its liability in case of a data breach.

In order to receive this validation, a startup must assess its compliance level with the PCI’s standards. If everything looks good, the startup completes a formal claim that states the business is compliant with the PCI.

Then, someone on behalf of the PCI reviews your paperwork and findings. Once this process is completed, a startup presents its validated documents to partnering credit card companies and/or banks.

Spoiler alert: it’s not fun, nor is a business legally obliged to comply. But, it should be implemented early-on at an operational level. It can save startups tons of headaches later.

-ML

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