MagicCube, a cell safety startup, has raised $15 million in a spherical led through Mosaik Partners.

Bold Capital, Epic Ventures, card-reader/POS hardware maker ID Tech and unnamed man or woman traders withinside the fintech area additionally participated withinside the financing, which brings the Santa Clara-primarily based totally startup’s general investment raised to $30 million on account that its 2014 inception.

Put simply, MagicCube’s software program-primarily based totally era is geared toward changing all safety chips, that have traditionally been the same old for properly storing touchy information and authenticating whoever wishes to get admission to it. And it’s beginning with monetary services. In the enterprise’s era, we could traders remodel cell gadgets into fee terminals. Or in different words, it offers traders a manner to simply accept card bills on any client tool without a reader or greater hardware required.

“We are at the verge of a large paradigm shift on the subject of how we stable information on all varieties of gadgets, mainly those used for monetary transactions,” stated MagicCube CEO Sam Shawki. “The chip scarcity this is halting whole industries and trekking tool fees has uncovered how antiquated the contemporary technique is and the way treasured MagicCube’s answer is to address this issue — this spherical displays that.”

Shawki, who formerly served as head of Visa’s worldwide faraway bills commercial enterprise unit, co-based MagicCube together along with his spouse Nancy Zayed, who spent years running at the OS organization at Apple. The pair, who’s of Egyptian descent, commenced the enterprise with the intention to expand the era that might remove the want for hardware on the subject of cell safety.

Visa is virtually any investor in MagicCube, having subsidized the enterprise in August of 2020 and over again earlier than that. Other backers withinside the enterprise consist of Azure Capital Partners, Epic Ventures, NTT Data, Silicon Valley Bank, and the Sony Innovation Fund, amongst others. (Sony’s VC fund invested an undisclosed quantity in MagicCube in past due May 2020).

That August 2020 funding got here at the heels of Apple’s $a hundred million acquisition of MagicCube competitor Mobeewave, a Montreal startup whose software program turns iPhones into cell fee terminals. MagicCube’s era become reportedly anticipated to supplement Visa’s tap-to-telecall smartphone initiative. The Apple/Mobeewave deal did now no longer deter Shawki, who believes that his startup “might be the dominant birthday celebration at the Android side, that is 85% of the universe.”

MagicCube’s first utility facilities on software program POS, or softPOS for short. Using a cellphone or different cellular device, a service provider can take softPOS bills without the want for added hardware, inclusive of a conventional POS terminal. Payments thru contactless playing cards and virtual wallets may be familiar from an array of economic offerings vendors via an array of cellular gadgets with the equal degree of safety as a chip, consistent with the company.

MagicCube additionally claims that its software program-primarily based totally Trusted Execution Environment (sTEE) “is the primary and best software program solution” to be diagnosed through EMVCo, the consortium that oversees the worldwide infrastructure for chip-primarily based totally price playing cards and reputation gadgets — to supply a degree of safety this is similar to hardware-primarily based totally approaches.

“What we are able to do with our era is to simplify,” Shawki said. “On your credit score card, there’s a SIM card that is basically a metallic secure. What MagicCube has is that this era that may be a digital secure this is a natural software program that could conceal secrets and techniques and code, serving a comparable cause to bodily security. And that is massive due to the fact in contrast to competitors, we are able to conceal facts in that digital secure… And sure that is proven, patented and a massive deal.”

MagicCube says that its sTEE is flexible and may be carried out throughout a number of use instances to update hardware-steady factors including SIM cards, chips used on Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets like automobiles, and clever domestic appliances, or even bank-grade Hardware Security Modules (HSM). The corporation’s first product, i-Accept, changed into the design with a purpose to disrupt the extra than the $70 billion in step with yr spent through banks and traders anywhere on factor-of-sale card readers.

Through i-Accept, obtaining banks and different monetary offerings establishments provide traders and stores a manner to just accept charge cards, contactless transactions, and cell wallets including Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay — all at “card present” prices for traders and without limits on transaction quantities for consumers. MagicCube says that its i-Accept product also can seize monetary PINs and different verification strategies on any cell tool, consisting of phones, drugs, and big clever screens — without the want for committed hardware or terminals.

The corporation plans to apply the capital utilized in its trendy investment spherical to boost up deployment of its software program-primarily based totally protection merchandise. MagicCube additionally plans to amplify its income and consumer shipping groups in addition to accelerate the improvement of merchandise aimed toward serving a number of the industries maximum suffering from the chip shortage, including crypto wallets, cloud, and in-automobile protection, amongst others.

Howard Mergelkamp, the accomplice at Mosaik Partners, believes MagicCube’s generation is “really unique” and one which the monetary offerings enterprise particularly has “reached the tipping factor of each choice and want for adoption.”

“This tech can aid cell and IoT gadgets with a platform that is simple to combine and now no longer sure through tool makers or unique use instances,” he said. “This is extraordinary at the contemporary landscape.”

MagicCube’s generation is the “killer app” exactly as it isn’t an “app,” he added.

“It is tethered to neither a hardware platform nor ecosystem (à Los Angeles Apple), nor a selected protection specification or protocol, nor a selected software program solution,” Mergelkamp continued. “MagicCube can supply its ironclad protection to any software program-enabled tool, observe the safety specs of any enterprise (including bills or healthcare) these days or tomorrow, and combine into any corporation’s contemporary structures to permit that corporation to hold complete possession and manipulate of its data.”