Companies spend a lot of time chasing late payments, which distracts them from their core businesses and causes cash flow issues.
Manual billing cycles and processes are prone to mistakes and fraud, and this is one of the reasons why time is wasted during payment collection. These are the gaps that Anchor, a US startup with a research and development center in Israel, is trying to bridge.
The startup launched this year is trying to solve the problems in billing, collection and payment by using automation to save businesses time. The cloud-based system of the startup eliminates the issue of late payments and streamlines end-to-end billing for service providers.
After landing $15 million in seed-funding, Anchor plans to accelerate its growth by expanding its team, partnering with more clients and launching a marketing drive.
Today marks the beginning of the next payments revolution, which will make existing B2B payment processes obsolete and redefine what billing, collections and payments should look like in the modern world. It was important for Anchor to develop a solution that puts an end to invoice fraud and human errors.
We are allowing payments to flow autonomously between service providers and businesses of all sizes. Within a few years, we aim for Anchor to become a gold standard for how businesses do business.
A research and development center in Israel is where Anchor is located.
The funding round was co-led by Rapyd and the new venture capital arm of Rapyd, with an Israel based venture capital firm that has invested in multiple companies.
Arik Shtilman, CEO of Rapyd said that they knew immediately that they wanted to invest in Anchor, a company that has built a modern framework for B2B payments and billing.
The self-executing end-to-end billing and payments solution covers vendor and client agreement, while managing the invoicing, payment, and reconciliation steps, is offered by Anchor.
Once the service is delivered or when the bill is due, invoices are automatically populated and sent as per the contracts, thanks to the startup's system that integrates with the client's payment information and with the service provider's technologies.
The B2B payments space is highly fragmented due to each vertical requiring some level of specialization, according to the co-founder and managing partner of ENTrée Capital.
Eyal said that they believe that Anchor will become a key player in the industry through the deployment of its solutions to thousands of service-oriented businesses.
Cash flow problems are the biggest impediment to growth for small-medium enterprises. Late payment is the main reason why small businesses face cash flow challenges. In the US, small businesses make up 42% of economic activity.
According to a survey by Melio and YouGov, most businesses in the US experience late payments with 25 of the companies saying it makes it hard for them to keep their businesses open.
The challenges can be eliminated using technology.
He said that the challenges of billing and collections stem from the human element.
If people could trust the invoices from service providers, they would no longer have to deal with the pain of billing and payments, and cash would be easy to come by.
