Upflow raises USD15m Series A to revolutionize how B2B businesses get paid

Upflow has raised USD 15m to revolutionize how B2B companies get paid. The company provides a SaaS solution that enables companies to radically modernize their entire cash-cycle, and effortlessly collect customer payments. Upflow now processes more than $200m worth of invoices a month, for over 1.5m transacting companies.

The funding round includes participation from 9yards Capital and startup studio eFounders. Several industry-leading angel investors also participated, including N26 CoFounder Maximilian Tayenthal; SVP Delivery, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty of Uber; and Raffael Johnen, Co-Founder & CEO at auxmoney. As part of the transaction, the former co-founder and co-CEO of Westwing, Andrew Nutter will join the board. The company also attended YCombinator in Winter 2020.

Currently, businesses typically use a combination of manual processes and archaic payment methods to get paid.  This often leads to a disjointed system that is reliant on manual interactions and creates high-friction and error-prone processes. This, in turn, can create late payments which remain an acute problem for the economy today.

Upflow seamlessly integrates with finance tools such as QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, and Chargebee. The company also partners with payment gateways like Stripe and GoCardless, to provide business teams with a central hub to better manage communication with customers and payments.

Alexandre Louisy, CEO of Upflow, explains the situation as it stands, and the company’s mission

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“We are on a mission to revolutionize the way that companies get paid. At Upflow, we provide a solution that adds connectivity and clarity to a company’s payment and invoicing stack. Where systems were previously closed and disconnected, Upflow’s platform enables smooth and clear processes.

By enabling a company to take control of its entire cash cycle, we want to help eradicate late payments. There is a common misconception that ‘late payments’ are only a symptom of big companies holding smaller vendors to long payment cycles. Upflow sees it differently: late payments are a tech problem, as B2B payments haven’t changed for decades.

In the US, a huge amount of B2B payments are based on paper checks; and in Europe, even the most modern accounting software only generates a pdf invoice. The onus is still on the client to manually input banking details and make the payment. All of these ‘high friction’ processes contribute to late payments. By rethinking the entire process, we unlock significant working capital, and thus growth, for those companies.”

Founded in 2018, the company now connects a network of over 1.5m companies, and has processed over $1bn in payments since launch. Upflow has begun distributing the solution in the US, and has gained key users such as Lattice, Front, Adikteev.

With this new round of funding, Upflow will invest in developing their product, with an ambitious roadmap on integrations, payments, and financial services. It will also expand its distribution capabilities in the US by setting up a new office in New York.

David Fisher, Managing Partner at 9Yards Capital says, “Through our repeated investments in the fintech space, we believe that B2B payments are going to be transformed in the next decade. The opportunity in front of Upflow is incredible, and we’ve been impressed by their product-led approach to a well-known, but unsolved issue.  They’re very well positioned to help transform the payment processes that have been broken for some time, and we look forward to playing our part in their journey.

Barnaby Malet, Upflow co-founder and CTPO says, “We’re craftspeople that believe finance teams should benefit from simple, high-quality experiences that are on-par with the leading consumer apps. We have a pragmatic, fact-based approach, and we want everything about the company to be state-of-the-art: our HR policies, our processes, and our stack. We look forward to continually raising the standard for finance teams across the globe.”