N26, Uber execs back France’s Upflow in $15m round to help businesses get paid on time

June 15, 2021

Paris-based startup Upflow raised $15m in a Series A funding round to help businesses avoid late payments and improve cash cycle.

The Series A was joined by 9yards Capital, eFounders and angels N26 co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal, Uber SVP of Delivery Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, auxmoney co-founder and CEO Raffael Johnen.

Businesses typically use a combination of manual processes and archaic payment methods to get paid, often leading to late payments. Upflow promises to fix this with its SaaS platform that lets firms take control of their entire cash cycles, we want to help eradicate late payments. The technology integrates with finance tools such as QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite and Chargebee, while Upflow also partners with payment gateways like Stripe and GoCardless, to provide business teams with a central hub to better manage communication with customers and payments.

When users send an invoice using Upflow, customers get a link with several payment methods. You can connect your Upflow account with Stripe Payments to enable card payments for instance. 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 — it represents over $1bn in payments.

With today’s funding round, the company plans to expand to the U.S. Upflow already has a few customers there, such as Lattice, Front and Adikteev, but it’s just a start. The startup will open an office in New York. Besides, the startup is looking to triple the size of its team within 12 months.

Commenting on the funding Upflow CEO Alexandre Louisy said, “We are on a mission to revolutionize the way that companies get paid. At Upflow, we provide a solution that adds connectivity and clarity to a company’s payment and invoicing stack. Where systems were previously closed and disconnected, Upflow’s platform enables smooth and clear processes.

“By enabling a company to take control of its entire cash cycle, we want to help eradicate late payments. There is a common misconception that ‘late payments’ are only a symptom of big companies holding smaller vendors to long payment cycles. Upflow sees it differently: late payments are a tech problem, as B2B payments haven’t changed for decades.”