Still, in most organisations, financial teams have to do a significant amount of manual work due to multiple disconnected tools for cards, payments, invoices, and expense management.
However, Payhawk, a London-based financial system reduces this disconnect by combining those key elements in a single platform.
Secured $100M
Payhawk, on Tuesday, announced that it has secured an additional $100M to extend its Series B round to $215M. The extension round has helped the company reach a valuation of $1B, making it the first-ever Bulgarian company to achieve unicorn status.
The capital round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures, and Jigsaw VC.
The latest fund comes three months after securing the initial tranche of Series B funding in November 2021 of $115M. Even before that, the company raised $20M in Series A round in April 2021.
How will the funding be used?
The funding will enable the company to accelerate its presence in the mid-size enterprise market and continue its global expansion plans.
The fresh capital will be used to further grow Payhawk’s product team by adding 60 additional senior software engineers in Sofia from the top 1% of the market.
Other existing features for enterprise customers will be extended too, including Oracle Netsuite integration, Subscription Management, and Budgets.
The UK company is set to open offices in Amsterdam and Paris in March and New York in September.
The company also plans to triple its headcount from 100 to more than 300 by the end of this year, with the extra funds set to fuel a renewed sales and marketing push for further market expansion.
One-stop-shop for finance teams
Founded in 2018 by Hristo Borisov and Boyko Karadzhov and later joined by Konstantin Dzhengozov, Payhawk is a financial platform that combines expense management, payments, and invoice management in one solution.
The company has been the go-to platform for large SMEs and enterprise customers, especially those with a multinational footprint. The company serves businesses in 30 countries across a variety of industries, currencies, and payment methods.
At present, the company’s customer base includes a mix of multinational companies like LuxAir, Lotto24, Viking Life, Gtmhub, Flink, MacPaw, and By Miles.
Payhawk also provides an industry-first 3% cashback on card payments up to the full subscription amount, enabling customers to drive their subscription costs to zero.
Payhawk is digitally transforming the agenda of companies like A.T.U in Germany, where the product has replaced cash with company cards at more than 550 branches.
Hristo Borisov, CEO, and Founder of Payhawk says, “We always knew that we could build a big company if we addressed a significant problem in a large market. The size of the opportunity still drives our growth and ambition today. Every employee that deals with company payments feels that there should be a better way to do it, but this huge problem was never tackled by a strong product team with a hardcore engineering background. This is what Payhawk brings to the market.”
“Becoming the first unicorn in Bulgaria is a huge testament to the hard work and resilience of our team over the last three and a half years. We are just at the beginning of our journey, and we cannot wait to continue reinventing how businesses manage their payments.”
Investor
Based out of California, Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets.
It focuses on seed, early-stage, later-stage, expansion stage, start-up, growth companies, and incubation and specializes in debt financing for start-up and growth companies.
Arsham Memarzadeh, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, says, “Payhawk is more than just spend management software. It’s a one-stop-shop for finance teams to consolidate the previously disparate systems required to spend, track, process, and budget corporate funds. After getting to know the team for over a year, we’ve been blown away with their pace of product development, building the most comprehensive solution in the market in less than four years.”
