A ‘FinTech for business’ platform has received investment from backers of ‘buy now pay later’ giant Klarna.
QED Investors – a US-based fund that has invested in 18 FinTech unicorns – led the £14 million Series A round into London-headquartered Payhawk.
The start-up, which unifies all company payments and expense management, plans to expand its product offering and triple its marketing and sales team.
Currently, finance teams use multiple disconnected tools for payments, invoices and expense management. Payhawk acts as a one-stop-shop, combining these key elements, and closing the gap between banks and Enterprise Resource Planning systems.
As a result, Payhawk empowers finance teams to reduce manual work, keep tight control of budgets in real-time, and fully automate spend across every payment method.
https://businesscloud.co.uk/uk-klarna-rival-raises-57m-as-it-plans-us-expansion/
The firm posted 10x growth in 2020 and has already doubled its revenue in Q1. Its customer base consists of a mix of fast-growing and multinational companies including LuxAir, Lotto24, Viking Life, ATU, Gtmhub, Flink, MacPaw and By Miles.
Existing investor Earlybird Digital East, who led the $3.6m seed round in March 2020, is also contributing fresh capital. Yusuf Ozdalga will join the Payhawk board alongside existing investors Mehmed Atici from Earlybird Digital East and Vassil Terziev from Eleven Ventures.
“We have huge ambitions for the year ahead. Over the next year, we are keen to provide great support to finance teams across 30+ countries to manage company cards, invoices and payments in a unified and efficient way,” said founder and CEO Hristo Borisov.
“We plan to significantly expand our integrations to existing ERP systems, and also easily connect on top of every business bank account across Europe and beyond. To do this, we need to invest in building the right setup and team to scale further, and the new funding round will enable us to do this.”
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There are plans to grow its offices in the UK, Germany and Spain. It also has a base in Bulgaria.
Yusuf Ozdalga, QED Investors, said: “The company is growing at a phenomenal rate. The company’s product fundamentals are exceptionally strong, and industry trends are working in the company’s favour too.
“As budgets are more typically managed online by remote teams, there is unprecedented demand for cost-effective finance solutions. We look forward to working with Hristo and the team.”