TruRating is excited to announce it has raised $16.6 million in Series A funding. This takes the total amount raised by founder Georgina Nelson since 2014 to $26.4 million.

TruRating, a new mass-market ratings system, offers an alternative model to TripAdvisor and Yelp! by giving retailers and restaurants the peace of mind that the feedback they receive is from a genuine paying customer.

The idea is simple. Everyone who uses the payment terminal to pay is asked to rate one of five questions related to service, value, product, experience, and likelihood to recommend the brand, on a scale of 0-9. Merchants are given the feedback in real time so they can assess service levels and make adjustments and improvements. 9 out of 10 people asked to rate when they pay do so, providing merchants with a mass-market view of service and value performance across the company.

Earlier this year, TruRating hit its first landmark with 1 million ratings; just a few months later, it has doubled that. In time, this information will be made available to consumers online, making it easy to compare ratings and make an informed choice about where to shop and eat.

TruRating is already live in the UK and Australia, working with numerous small independent retailers and restaurants; fast-growing restaurant chains, such as Ping Pong and Franco Manca; and large merchants like Arco. Pilots are also under way in both markets with major global brands; to be announced later this year.

TruRating is enabled on the merchant’s existing payment terminal via their partnerships with the world’s largest payment businesses. These include global terminal hardware providers Verifone and Ingenico and a host of key processing banks and payment service providers across North America, Europe and Australia.

Georgina Nelson, Founder and CEO, explains TruRating's aspirations for growth in the Canadian market: “We have already had a fantastic response to TruRating and are working across the payments sector to enable businesses of all sizes and types to access ground breaking insights. We’ve established an amazing team in Toronto and our partners are enjoying working with us to provide a value added service that gets to the heart of helping businesses improve. We’re lining up some of Canada’s most high profile retail and restaurant brands to collect ratings in coming months and we’re seeing huge appetite among businesses to get validated, real-time ratings from the majority of their customers. Our examples from the UK and Australian markets, where 88% of consumers are rating when asked, are proving the value of making it easy for consumers to have their say so merchants can respond and improve.”

Looking ahead, Georgina adds, "We will be announcing more payment partnerships in the coming months. These will allow us to open up TruRating to even more merchants and, as a result, some very big household names will be working with us by the end of the year, adding millions of ratings every day.”

This round of funding was led by Sandaire, an international investment office for families and foundations, and a private family investment group. Early rounds of seed funding included investment from angels Peter Ayliffe, former President and CEO Visa Europe and now Chairman of TruRating; Anthony Gutman, Co-head, European Investment Banking Services at Goldman Sachs International; and Chris Blundell, Global Head of Technology at Brunswick Group.

TruRating was recently named a Gartner 2016 Cool Vendor and has won numerous awards for innovation, including The Cards and Payment Awards 2016, Future 50, and Ingenico Group Best Application 2015.