Berlin-based Kadmos, an end-to-end salary payments platform for cross-border employers, announced on Monday that it has raised €29M in a Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Blossom Capital, with participation from existing investors, including Addition and Atlantic Labs.
The announcement comes three months after raising €8.3M in a Seed round in March 2022.
The German company will use the funds to significantly increase its 30-person team and further invest in product and technology development.
With a focus on blue-collar migrant workers and an initial foothold in the shipping industry, the startup plans to move into verticals with similar salary payment structures – such as the construction industry, healthcare, and hospitality.
Kadmos was founded in 2021 by MIT graduates Justus Schmueser and Sasha Makarovych, with a mission to make the salary journey of millions of migrant workers more transparent, convenient, and less expensive.
The founders came up with Kadmos after a relative of Makarovych’s, who worked as a seafarer, told him of the complexity and hardship involved in getting paid.
Typically, the traditional financial system presents employers with unnecessary complexity when paying salaries across the globe and often requires employers to pay hefty fees to transfer salary payments.
“For example, the shipping industry is dominated by expensive, slow, and untransparent payment processes. Many shipping companies resort to bringing significant amounts of cash on board to pay their employees, which is both costly and insecure,” says the company.
Kadmos aims to tackle the restrictions placed on the financial freedom of cross-border employees and use modern financial technology to allow migrant workers to have a streamlined salary experience.
Kadmos provides companies with a simple, low-cost, and secure method for international salary transfers, while every migrant worker receives a digital wallet as well as a connected debit card to remit or directly spend money.
The funds can be kept in secure currencies within the Kadmos app, ensuring low transaction fees and market-leading foreign exchange rates.
This ensures workers keep more of their salary when they send money home, says the company.
The company also provides integration with the Kadmos web application, where companies can automatically add their employees through an API connection to various crewing software.
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