B2B Payments Fintech Startup Raises $19.3M in Series A Round
- Sequoia-backed payments startup Two just raised $19.3 million in a Series A round.
- The Oslo-based company plans to bring a version of buy now, pay later to B2B transactions.
- Take a look at the 10-slide pitch deck Two used to land the fresh money below.
A Sequoia-backed startup looking to bring a version of the buy now, pay later model to B2B transactions has just raised $19.3 million in new funding.
The Norwegian company Two, founded in 2020, gives businesses immediate interest-free trade credit when they make payments to other businesses.
The B2B payments sector has been much slower to innovate than its consumer counterpart. In part, this is because a significant amount of business transactions take place offline with merchants sending manual invoices for payments and then waiting for settlement which can often take as long as 90 days.
Two co-founders and CEO Andreas Mjelde described the existing business payment process as painful and complicated and said he ran into problems with it at his previous startup Linio, a B2C marketplace.
“In my previous startup, we realized that there was an insufficient funnel for those who had to pay because the counterparty could not accept payments, which means lost opportunities,” he told Insider. “It’s a business problem because of the cost to the customer, and it’s very difficult to manage at scale.”
Two’s solution is to effectively offer a form of buy now, pay later for B2B payments to both SMEs and multinationals. The company offers credit and fraud guarantees at the same time as it monitors receivables and the collection process.
In fact, it is a form of working capital arrangement that allows sellers to be paid in advance before invoices are collected by Two.
Two’s platform is designed to have high acceptance rates for buyers and sellers by using multiple credit guarantees, along with its own proprietary credit decision models to speed up transactions.
The Oslo-based company’s funding round was led by Shine Capital and Antler, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Day One Ventures, Alumni Ventures, LocalGlobe, The Visionaries Club and Alliance VC, and takes the company to $30 million raised to date, including .a. previously unannounced post-financing.
The fresh capital will go towards expanding the start-up company’s presence in North America as well as doubling down on existing European markets such as the UK and the Nordics.
The company currently has about 70 employees, but Mjelde told Insider there was no impending hiring party following the funding round. “We want to grow with as few employees as we can,” he added. “Hiring great people has always been hard, and if it doesn’t feel hard, then you’re not setting the bar high enough.”
Check out Two’s 10-slide Series A pitch deck below:
