Fremont: New York-based Zipmark, a mobile and online payment company, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Village Ventures and Contour Venture Partners and supported by NYC Seed, High Peaks Venture Capital and the New York City Investment Fund.

Launched in 2010 by Jay Bhattacharya and Jake Howerton, Zipmark provides a direct and easy-to-use online payment platform that offers secure, Check21 compliant digital checks, and brings sophisticated check-processing infrastructure directly to billers and their customers.

“Our goal is to modernize the checkbook-to reduce the amount of time and money it takes to make a check payment, eliminate the possibility for bounced checks and take all risks out of the equation for payers and payee alike. Improving the payment and collection process is a huge opportunity for any company that bills it clients, such as estate managers and utility companies where inefficient collection practices can be detrimental to the bottom line,” said Jay Bhattacharya, Co-Founder and CEO, Zipmark.

Jay has spent seven years managing emerging technology projects at Citigroup and Co-Founded Mobile Money Ventures, a joint venture between Citi and SK Telecom, which implemented mobile banking products for Citigroup and other banks around the globe.

Zipmark’s state-of-the-art platform accepts secure payments from any bank, thrift or credit union checking account without onerous fees or long delays, charging 1 percent for each transaction with a cap at $5 regardless of the payment amount. With each transaction, Zipmark helps businesses and their customers lower payment processing administrative costs and eliminates the additional labor hours that result from bounced checks. Zipmark’s iPhone app enables users to make payments for items such as rent, fees or subscriptions directly from paper invoices via QR codes.

Matt Harris, Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Village Ventures, said, “Zipmark is the first online payments company to dig beneath the user interface level and change the way money moves at the settlement level, correcting inefficiencies inherent in the current system.”

With the cost of credit and debit transaction fees as well as NSF (non-sufficient funds) fees on the rise, there is a significant need among both small and large businesses across many industries for a more efficient electronic checking payment solution. Zipmark has seen overwhelmingly positive results in its pilot program with NYC real estate company Sunshine Suites.