UK-based Coupay secured £200,000 pre-seed funding from SFC Capital and angels including serial entrepreneur Will Wynne of Smart Pension, Arena Flowers and Trulience in a bid to help small businesses get from sales to cash faster.
The funding will be used to grow Coupay’s team, refine the product and fuel its marketing efforts to help hundreds of thousands of small businesses raise smart invoices and get their cash in faster.
Coupay leverages open banking and user insights to help small businesses, freelancers and the self-employed get paid securely, but smarter, quicker and more conveniently. They do this by delivering a low-cost, hugely scalable invoicing and payments platform through which businesses can send ‘Smart Invoices’ that allow their customers to pay them by bank transfer in just a few quick taps on their phone.
Commenting on the funding, Coupay CEO Ravi Jakhodia said, “In the aftermath of Covid, many amongst us are choosing the self-employed route, which is making the UK economy more vibrant and innovative. Current invoicing tools are not designed for these micro-businesses, plus existing payment products take a significant chunk of their invoice value. We are here to change this thanks to Open Banking and our innovative self-service platform.”
According to SFC Capital investment executive Edward Stevenson, “in a few years from now, manual bank transfers will be a thing of past,” and he is looking forward to see how “Coupay can drive this adoption of Smart Payments in the SME space.”
Echoing a similar sentiment, Wynne added, “At Smart Pension, we support over 80,000 active SMEs and we do a lot of user research into their wants and needs; I am really impressed with the sharp focus Coupay has on smart invoicing and open banking payments to make life easier for busy individuals. As their platform grows, I can see multiple opportunities for Coupay to offer more to the self-employed and beyond.”
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