Ribbit Capital led a $25 million Series A round of funding for Balance, a payment platform that targets B2B merchants.
Avid Ventures was involved in the financing. They were joined by existing backers Lightspeed Ventures and Stripe, Y Combinator Continuity Funds, SciFi VC, and UpWest. The round was also funded by individual investors, including early employees, executives from Plaid and Square Capital, Stripe, Stripe, and Stripe. This financing comes six months after Balance announced a seed round of $5.5 million.
Bar Geron, CEO and co-founder, stated that the motivation behind the company's creation was simple. Yoni Shuster and he, both former employees of PayPal, founded the company in the early 2020s.
He said that B2B payments have been different from B2C in that they are not made at the time of purchase (or the point of sale), but instead within 30 days and include an invoice. The company claims that this is not an efficient process for vendors or merchants.
Geron stated that businesses are now avoiding using credit cards to pay for supplies because they can quickly run out.
TechCrunch was told by him that payments are the only thing that keeps merchants offline. This is a slow process that impedes the flow of these marketplaces, preventing them from scaling. The problem fascinated us.
Balance was founded at Y Combinator and has since developed what it calls a consumer-like B2B marketplace checkout platform for merchants or a self-serve digital checkout experience for B2B companies.
This means that Balance has created a B2B payment platform that allows merchants the ability to accept ACH, cards and bank wires. There are also a variety terms available, including payment on delivery and net payment terms. Balance is responsible for financing the terms of transactions that require financing. This involves evaluating the risk of the merchant, customer and the selected payment terms. Balance is built on Stripe and offers all Stripe's credit card payment options. However, it also extends beyond these options.
Geron stated that Balance had invested heavily in APIs for marketplaces.
TechCrunch was told by he that they have an API platform which is very robust so that businesses can manage all aspects of the payment flow without having to worry about regulation or risk. This is all without the businesses touching any funds.
Merchants have the advantage of receiving immediate payments that are always reconciled as credits. Balance states that marketplaces have automated vendor disbursement and a full compliance umbrella with reconciliation management.
Geron explained to TechCrunch that we want online payments to be as seamless for businesses as for consumers and that it should be done globally.
Geron said that the startup already has partnered with BigCommerce and Magento, and will soon work with Salesforce. The company's customers include startups, publicly traded marketplaces, and e-commerce companies in a range of industries, including steel, freight, hardware as well as food ordering, medical supply, apparel, and shipping. These include Bryzos and Choco, Zilingo, Bay Supply, and others.
Although it is still early days, Balance has experienced growth of approximately 500% to 600% from February's last raise, Geron stated. There are approximately 30 employees at the company with offices in Tel Aviv, New York and New York.
Jordan Angelos, general partner at Ribbit, and former head M&A at Stripe, believes that Balance's platform was built specifically to scale B2B marketplaces.
He wrote via email that B2B marketplaces have very specific needs in terms of capital markets and payments. Balances flexible toolkit can help them to solve these issues more effectively and holistically than other options. Checkout and payments are not the same thing. Balances products enable users to address both to better serve their customers and their own margins.
