- Melio provides small businesses with digital payments tools to better manage their supplier payments, minimizing time and cost while maximising cash flow.
- Founded in April 2018, Melio has since raised $144m in investment. Investors who have led the fundraising rounds include Accel, Aleph, Bessemer Venture Partners, Coatue Management and General Catalyst, with participation from LocalGlobe, Corner Ventures and American Express Ventures.
- Since it launched to customers in May 2019, Melio has grown rapidly; processing multi-billion dollar payment volumes per year.
- From March to August 2020, Melio has seen payments volumes increase by 700%, as small businesses, faced with the effects of COVID-19, turn to new technology to take control of their cash flow and manage their finances remotely.
- Melio also serves as a payments platform, recently partnering with Intuit QuickBooksⓇ to provide its bill payments capabilities inside QuickBooks.
Melio, a B2B payments company helping small businesses digitally manage their supplier payments, has raised $144m to reach more small businesses across the US as they shift to digital solutions to help manage the economic effects of Covid-19.
Small businesses typically use a variety of different tools to manage supplier payments, with almost half of B2B payments carried out with paper checks. Melio’s digital accounts payable and receivable dashboard provides a single, integrated tool that allows small businesses to transfer and receive payments in a faster, easier way, giving oversight and control over cash flow, reducing or eliminating late payment costs, and giving businesses back valuable time.
“At a time when small businesses need the most flexibility, they have the least,” said Matan Bar, Melio Co-Founder and CEO, who previously led Consumer P2P Payments at PayPal. “Our mission is to keep small businesses in business. We do this by allowing small businesses to manage payments remotely, paying when and how they want, giving them more control and helping businesses manage cash flow . Business payments shouldn’t be more complicated than paying a friend with your phone.”
Melio’s fundraising enables it to accelerate growth and reach more customers. It will also support the company’s plans to provide B2B payment capabilities to third parties, mirroring the development the tech industry has seen with B2C payments. Recently, the company partnered with Intuit Quickbooks, one of the leading fintech platforms for small businesses, to power one of its bill pay solutions.
“We are living in unprecedented times. Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, yet they are under intense pressure in the current environment. They require as much flexibility and control over their cash flow as possible to persevere. Melio provides the tools to achieve both and will play a critical role with small businesses and vendors to continually adapt, develop, and persist,” said Ken Chenault, former Chairman and CEO, American Express and now Chairman and Managing Director, General Catalyst.
Small businesses are crucial to the health of the US economy, accounting for 44% of all economic activity and employing roughly half the workforce, but COVID-19 has exacerbated existing pain points for small businesses, including the inability to pay using paper checks and coping with financial volatility. Before launching, Melio set up their own bookkeeping firm in New York to serve small businesses directly – an experience which has informed its understanding of their unique challenges.
Freight forwarding company ‘shifl’ now processes payments faster and saves $7500 a month in payments fees and courier charges: “Melio has made it super easy for shifl to facilitate payments with every shipment that we manage. We are paying many different fees on behalf of our customers for each shipment, but we have been able to expedite our payments 2-3 times than before, and most importantly, we eliminated the costly inefficiencies that were traditionally involved in the industry,” said shifl Founder and CEO Shabsie Levy.
Read More: Finastra Named a Leader Among Digital Banking Processing Platforms by Independent Research Firm
