London-based Payhawk, a fintech platform that unifies all company payments and expense management secured $20 million in a Series A funding round. This investment comes 12 months after completing its seed round.
Investment from QED Investors
The funding round was led by US-based fund QED Investors, which has a good track record of investing in 18 fintech unicorns including Klarna and Nubank. Also, existing investor Earlybird Digital East, which led $3.6 million seed funding in Payhawk in March last year participated in the round. Besides them, Yusuf Ozdalga will join the company’s board along with existing investors Mehmed Atici from Earlybird Digital East and Vassil Terziev from Eleven Ventures.
The funds will let Payhawk expand its product offering further and grow its team. The company will expand coverage for businesses outside the EU and UK, add new payment products including credit cards, and support additional currencies with industry-leading FX rates. Also, the fintech will also work to streamline the cash flow from existing bank accounts to Payhawk to provide unlimited spending capabilities for finance teams.
Furthermore, it will accelerate its use of AI and machine learning in order to introduce smart workflows, and reduce the need for manual review and approval. The company plans to triple its marketing and sales team in 2021 and expand into the UK, Germany and Spain.
Yusuf Ozdalga, QED Investors said, “We are delighted to invest in Payhawk. 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”
Payhawk CEO and founder Hristo Borisov said, “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. 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”
10x growth in 2020
Currently, finance teams use multiple disconnected tools for payments, invoices, and expense management. This is where Payhawk comes to play a major role as it acts as a one-stop solution, which combines these key elements and closes the gap between banks and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. The company empowers finance teams to minimise manual work, keep tight control of budgets in real-time, and fully automate spend across every payment method. Payhawk delivers a single solution for finance teams that can serve their businesses in 30 countries.
Furthermore, the company posted 10x growth in 2020 and doubled its revenue in Q1 of 2021. Its customer base consists of a mix of fast-growing and multinational companies including LuxAir, Lotto24, Viking Life, ATU, Gtmhub, MacPaw and By Miles.