Paystand, the blockchain-enabled payment network for business, announced its $50 million Series C round of funding led by NewView Capital with participation from SoftBank’s Opportunity Fund, King River Capital, Industrious Ventures, and Transform Capital. This new round nearly doubles the funding Paystand raised in prior rounds and reflects the company’s triple-digit growth as it leads the movement for an open commercial finance system. Paystand will use this new capital to invest in redefining B2B payments to accelerate the shift to a more business-centric payment infrastructure. With the funding, Jazmin Medina of NewView Capital will join the board.
Paystand breaks the traditional payment model by automating the entire cash lifecycle so businesses can unlock cashless, feeless, intuitive payments. The company leverages cloud technology and the Ethereum blockchain to power the Paystand Bank Network—a digital, highly secure B2B payment network with zero fees. Rather than charging a traditional percentage fee on each transaction, Paystand delivers a Payments-as-a-Service subscription model so businesses can scale without incurring significant fee-per-transaction costs that penalize growth. While consumer-facing businesses regard the 2% to 3.5% payment acceptance fee charged by card networks and fintech providers as a necessary cost of doing business, midsize and enterprise companies can no longer justify these fees.
“DeFi and blockchain represent the largest shift in our economy in over a generation. B2B payments can now happen instantly and securely as money has become software; yet, most finance teams are still mired in paper, manual processes, and fees,” says Paystand co-founder and CEO Jeremy Almond. “With this new funding, Paystand is uniquely positioned to bring the benefits of blockchain to commercial payments so businesses can be more agile and competitive in the post-pandemic landscape. Our vision is to create an open financial infrastructure that delivers a self-driving money experience for businesses and provides radically better economics for the industry overall.”
Fintech has enabled businesses and finance teams to realize many efficiencies, but the critical area of payments represents the “last unsolved mile” of software-powered infrastructure. As a result, despite moving to the cloud or adopting digital technology, businesses remain tethered to a pre-internet financial system that siphons revenue from their bottom line. Half of all B2B payments are still tied to inefficient, paper-based processes, and the digital alternatives – Visa and Mastercard – have amassed a combined market cap of $875 billion dollars on the back of punitive transaction costs. There is a clear and urgent need to replace the legacy payment monopolies with a business-first alternative.
The next wave of fintech, driven by DeFi and blockchain, is poised to transform the entire $125 trillion-dollar B2B payment industry by delivering truly autonomous, cashless, and intuitive payment infrastructure. Using this framework, Paystand has built the first real alternative to today’s monopolistic card networks and paper-heavy processes: a B2B payment network that delivers unrivaled speed, security, and cost.
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For customers, Paystand’s Payments-as-a-Service model creates a more capital-efficient revenue cycle by improving cash flow and delivering superior software economics to finance teams. As a result, companies who have made the shift to Paystand have more cash available to reinvest in strategic growth opportunities. Over a three-year period, the average Paystand customer realizes:
- 62% reduction in days sales outstanding (DSO)
- 50% savings on the cost of receivables
- 30%–75% savings on transaction fees
- $90,000 saving on labor costs
In just a few years, Paystand has become the category-defining company for the next-gen financial system. To date, more than 250,000 companies make payments through the Paystand blockchain-based network, resulting in over $2B in payment volume. The company’s 1007% revenue growth in the past three years, coupled with its 200% increase in monthly network payment volume and 2.5x increase in customers since its Series B, confirm the long overdue shift to the digital-first economy.
“Paystand has been quietly rebooting commercial payments since 2013. In the same way that the EV industry re-thought the automobile to permanently move society away from fossil fuels, Paystand is creating an entirely new system for B2B payments – not simply laying a digital facade over broken plumbing,” said Jazmin Medina of NewView Capital. “We are thrilled to be part of Paystand’s journey and to support the company’s mission to build the next category of open financial infrastructure for business.”
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