The French startup Upflow has raised a Series A round worth $ 15 million. The company wants to help you keep track of late payments. It optimizes how you collect payments from your customers to improve your cash flow.
Investors in today’s financing round include 9yards Capital, existing investor eFounders, as well as N26 co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal, Uber-SVP of Delivery Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, auxmoney co-founder and CEO Raffael Johnen.
People who run businesses often tell you that getting paid is an awkward job. When you create an invoice, your customer will likely wait a few weeks before paying you. Most companies end up with a backlog of outstanding invoices in an Excel spreadsheet.
They keep an eye on their bank account to manually reconcile these payments. And of course, they often have to email or call a customer to let them know it is time.
Upflow acts as a central repository to view all your invoices, track payments, communicate with your team and send reminders. But Upflow doesn’t want to replace your existing tools. Instead, the company has built integrations with popular business tools that you already use.
For example, you can link your Upflow account to QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, Chargebee and Stripe Billing. You can charge your customers from your existing billing platform. Upflow imports your invoices, customers and payments. If Upflow detects a late payment, you will receive a notification and you can start sending automatic or personalized emails.
The startup also considers the current B2B payment methods to be out of date. Too many companies in the US still rely on paper checks. In France, copying IBAN information from an email to your bank account can be a hassle.
When you send an invoice with Upflow, customers receive a link with multiple payment methods. You can connect your Upflow account to Stripe Payments, for example to enable card payments. And the startup is slowly building a network of companies that have used Upflow at some point. 1.5 million companies have interacted with the product – the equivalent of over $ 1 billion in payments.
“Our mission is to revolutionize the way companies are paid. At Upflow, we offer a solution that brings connectivity and clarity to a company’s payment and invoicing stack. Where systems were previously closed and separated, Upflow’s platform enables smooth and clear processes, ”said co-founder and CEO Alexandre Louisy in a statement.
With today’s financing round, the company wants to expand into the USA. Upflow already has some clients there like Lattice, Front and Adigteev, but it’s just a start. The startup will open an office in New York.