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The Austin software mobile payment startup SimplyTapp, Inc. has just raised $5.9 million of a planned $8.4 million financing round, according to an SEC filing.

[ibimage==32545==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-right]It's been a whopper year for SimplyTapp. It launched in 2011 as NewBoat Technologies, brought home a $1.4 million Series A round from Lightspeed Ventures before last Christmas, and launched a platform for card issuers and developers over the summer. It is part of a wave of host card emulation (HCE) technologies designed to allow consumers to make easy payments from their smartphones in lieu of physical cards or cash.

"We are excited to make this exceptional offering to issuers and application developers, said SimplyTapp CEO Douglas Yeager in a statement coinciding with the launch. “It is consistent technology built into our agile and scalable platform. HCE is a new and tremendously empowering feature for card issuers, so it is important that the process of getting familiar with and using the new technology be as friction free and open as possible."

Yeager has long been in a unique position to follow trends in communications tech. Before he joined SimplyTapp, Yeager was the CEO of TradeWind Technologies LLC, which developed RFID readers. Since that firm was acquired in 2006, he has kept his ear in the cloud.

SimplyTapp is also noteworthy for its very generous relationship with developers. Much of its code is available for free on its blog.

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