M&a là gì
While working as the head of treasury at Braintree, Boris de Souza once discovered a $90 million payment that went “missing” for over two weeks because of poor payments infrastructure.
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“It was my first week on the job, & I received an gmail from a client saying ‘I think you shorted us $90 million,’” he recalls. “I looked into it, and they were right. I figured out there was a bug in the system, fixed it và wired the money. But it was incredible to lớn me that it took them 2 ½ weeks lớn know they were missing $90 million.”
For de Souza, who was also a founding engineer at digital ngân hàng Chime & a hàng hóa manager at Slaông xã, the whole business payments space “has not really evolved” over the past several decades.
“Most business payments are still very much done in paper check và unintelligible ACH payments,” he said.
To set about helping solve sầu that problem, he left Braintree in 2019 & teamed up with fellow former Chime software engineer Zhuo Huang khổng lồ found Streamlined, an Oakland-based startup that is emerging from stealth today with a total of $4 million in funding. Streamlined raised $1 million in a pre-seed round led by SignalFire in 20trăng tròn and recently closed a $3 million seed financing co-led by Greycroft và SignalFire. Unusual Ventures and others put money in the lathử nghiệm round.
A lot of B2B payments tech is built on top of B2C tech, such as Stripe, that was engineered to lớn handle consumer card transactions, according khổng lồ de Souza. But Streamlined is different, he claims, in that it has “custom built” transaction infrastructure for B2B “from the ground up.”
Many businesses today still pay via paper checks & ACH, mainly for record-keeping and compliance reasons. Meanwhile, payment cycles remain “messy and prone khổng lồ irregularities,” he says. As such, according lớn de Souza, a company’s accounting department can waste time manually searching for payments, and then even more time trying khổng lồ reconcile individual invoices.
Streamlined’s mission is straightforward: to lớn give businesses the ability lớn accept payments from their business customers “how they want và when they want,” whether it be via paper check, ACH or credit thẻ.
“We are making it possible for us lớn accept payments, regardless of how the payment comes in,” de Souza told vnggroup.com.vn, “and then make it available to the recipient electronically and in the time that they decide.” This, he said, can also help merchants & their customers be compliant & up to lớn date.
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The company also touts that its infrastructure is designed khổng lồ allow for faster merchant payouts and lớn “dramatically simplify” reconciliation, which he believes is one of the company’s biggest differentiators.
“Where Streamlined really anchors itself against anybody toàn thân else,” he told vnggroup.com.vn, “is that we focus on this problem of reconciliation.”
Initially, the startup is working with fast-growing e-commerce companies, which have grown significantly in number and kích thước since the onphối of the COVID-19 pandemic, và currently handles “tens of thousands” of merchants’ payments daily. It’s targeting businesses with $10 million to lớn $100 million in GMV, và “a strong desire to lớn scale wholesale,” de Souza said. But the company’s long-term goal “is to lớn make B2B payments of any size & complexity simple.”
“Unlike retail transactions, B2B commerce is relationship-oriented, và every relationship is different,” de Souza added. “The method by which a buyer prefers to lớn pay, or the timing for that payment, comes down khổng lồ the way the relationship is defined between buyer and seller, and this is a major reason why B2B payments is so fragmented, so complex và is still so hands-on. We’re approaching this challenge with a deep understanding of both buyers và sellers.”
Streamlined, he says, can sync with Quickbooks & Shopify và customers can create invoices in Streamlined or directly on Shopify.
De Souza declined to lớn giới thiệu revenue growth metrics, saying only that some of its recent growth “has been strongly tied khổng lồ the recent changes in e-commerce và a push for more wholesale.” It makes money by charging a processing fee per payment.
The company plans to use its new capital to beef up its 10-person staff, particularly its engineering team. It is open lớn hiring people who don’t have sầu experience in the payments industry.
“I think it’s important for people without a payments background to consider the space, và it’s exciting, because you’re bringing a new lens to a problem that people have sầu stared at for years,” de Souza said.
SignalFire founding partner and CTO Ilya Kirnos believes that the growth of B2B e-commerce has created a need for better payment và reconciliation tools. Brick-and-mortar retailers who had to lớn shift their business online when COVID hit had plenty of options when setting up an e-commerce storefront, he points out.
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“There are tons of modern tools for B2C e-commerce payments, whether it’s Shopify, Stripe, etc.…,” Kirnos told vnggroup.com.vn. “…But B2B commerce is very different — more parties are involved in a transaction, you have to match the invoice khổng lồ the payment, most payments are still made by check or ACH, và not credit card. There is no straightforward way to vì chưng this today as a merchant online, & this is the gap Streamlined is addressing.”
Greycroft partner John Elton agrees that the “consumerization of B2B payments is here.”
“It’s not just about the payment — it’s the whole experience a business has dealing with payments,” he said. “The status quo is often a manual, paper-driven process that is disconnected…With Streamlined, businesses don’t have khổng lồ worry about payments và get paid faster, more accurately, in a process that is seamlessly tied inkhổng lồ the existing finance and accounting applications.”
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