Edison Partners has generated a more than 10-times return through the sale of Billtrust, a provider of payment cycle management solutions.
The firm sold the company to New York-based private equity firm W Capital Partners, however, additional financial details of the sale were not disclosed. Edison was the first institutional investor in Billtrust when it handed the company $4m in October 2006.
To date, Billtrust has raised $104m in funding from Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital Ventures and Riverwood Capital.
“Billtrust Founder and CEO Flint Lane was a visionary in 2001, continues to be the leading innovator in B2B billing payments, and pioneered payment cycle management today. He saw the opportunity in this market before the FinTech ecosystem declared enterprise-focused Fintech a ‘cool’ sector,” said Chris Sugden, managing partner of Edison Partners, who led the investment. “Flint and the entire Billtrust team epitomise the founders, CEOs and growth-stage businesses we aim to serve.”
Founded in 2001, New Jersey-based Billtrust helps companies automate and accelerate their accounts receivable (AR) processes to increase cash flow, improve operational efficiency and drive customer satisfaction.
Earlier this year, the business bought Credit2B, which leverages crowdsourcing and other technologies to provide up-to-date payment behaviours and financial risk information on common customers. The purchase expanded Billtrust’s Quantum solution suite with the addition of business credit reports, online credit applications, machine learning credit scores and credit analytics capabilities.
A month later, Billtrust partner with Flywire, a provider of global payment and receivables solutions. Billtrust’s users now receive an integrated solution that adds Flywire’s international payment processing and receivable capabilities to Billtrust’s automated invoice delivery and payment services. The joint offering also helps these customers collect international payments while lowering the cost of international wire fees and eliminating the manual posting of cross-border payments.
“Edison’s capital helped to finance our growth, while the investments from the Edison team, Director Network and the Edison Edge value-add platform helped us to scale our growth,” said Flint Lane, founder and CEO, Billtrust. “Chris’ board leadership, mentorship and friendship has been invaluable to the business, and to me personally; and more recently, Kelly Ford’s hands-on participation with our team and board has helped us evolve our go-to-market strategy to achieve the next level of scalable growth. I look forward to many more years working in close partnership with the team at Edison.”
To date, Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, including 40 FinTech companies. The firm recently led the $42m Series B round for mobile personal finance platform MoneyLion. The company enables consumers to control their financial lives with services for borrowing, saving and investing.
Edison Partners also recently hit the fundraising trail for its ninth private equity fund in what could become its biggest-ever vehicle. It is looking to collect up to $300m for Edison Partners IX according to a filing the firm lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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