Start-up of B2B payments Hero secures € 12 million in new financing

by James · July 12, 2022

French fintech startup Hero has raised € 12.4 million to scale its B2B payment solution, just seven months after launch.

The round is led by Paua Ventures, Embedded / Capital and Rapyd Ventures. Additional investments come from angel investors including Guillaume Princen from Stripe, Phillippe de Passorio from Adyen and Peter O’Higgins from Revolut.

Hero’s full-stack payment solution is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, which it says is still understaffed by sitting banks. The new startup builds a horizontally integrated payment platform that allows corporate customers to handle both sides of a transaction, including purchases to pay for customers and order-to-cash for suppliers. While invoice invoicing is common for large companies, Hero brings it to the masses.

The platform also has a transparent guarantee to offer immediate financing terms, based on a proprietary data and risk engine; plus seamless integration with third-party software including ERPs and accounting tools.

“Completely different from others” in the B2B payment area

The company was not founded until late last year, but has already put together a team of 30 employees, drawn from the likes of Alma, Natixis and Dalenys. It was founded by Roland Jais-Nielsen, a well-known series founder who has previous experience in both fintech and B2B trading.

Regarding today’s announcement, Jais-Nielsen says: “Hero started as an intermediary for B2B transactions, and took on the financial and credit risk of both counterparties and helped them optimize their cash flows. We quickly realized that reducing transaction costs for SMEs also meant better insurance, centralization of all sales channels and payment methods, third-party integration and end-to-end automation. We built Hero around this holistic vision. “

Georg Stockinger, Managing Partner at Paua Ventures, continues: “Hero stands out from others in the area because it makes offline B2B trading payments as seamless as an online B2C check-out experience, while integrating credit into every transaction. A number of integrations in the most commonly used B2B trading sales, ERP and accounting tools helped with rapid use. This is the reason after only 7 months [since] The startup Hero managed to bring in over 200 salespeople, execute 10,000+ transactions and grow by an astonishing 30% month over month. ”

And Harsh Govil, Rector of Embedded / Capital, says: “We believe in Roland’s vision and see Hero as well positioned to support the chronically underserved SME segment with a comprehensive payment and credit solution built to seamlessly serve omnichannel trading.”