Novel iminium-type coupling agents containing proton acceptors in their iminium moiety, which can be used beneficially as coupling agents in various chemical polypeptide and/or polynucleotide syntheses, and are particularly useful as yield enhancing and racemization suppressing coupling agents for use in peptide syntheses, are disclosed. Further disclosed are a process of preparing such iminium-type coupling agents and their use in the preparation of polypeptides and/or polynucleotides.